Mollified, Gard turned and collided with Rue’s indignant gaze. He quailed. Andrion pulled the small body against his side and said evenly, “Rue, if you tell Eldrafel that Gard brought us the hair, he will surely be punished. Do you really want to be the one who harms Chrysais’s son?”
The serving woman’s cheeks blanched at Chrysais’s name. She nodded understanding.
So much easier not to care. But nothing should be easy. Andrion released Gard with a rough caress. He took Dana’s hand and looked at Sumitra; equal tenacity, equal courage. A slight smile curved the fullness of Sumi’s mouth, a decision made and accepted. She stroked the zamtak, and a trill like a flight of arrows fell into the silence. Dana’s eyelashes fluttered, revealing a tiny slit of dull green.
Andrion’s heart so stammered with love and hope that it felt like a knife blade turning in his chest. Sumitra’s fingers moved again. Music cascaded over Dana’s body. Her lips blushed pink. The green sparked. Ah, Ashtar, the unguarded depths of those eyes!
Ah, Harus, the sudden pallor deadening the glow of Sumitra’s mahogany cheek—Andrion’s knees buckled and dropped him on the edge of the couch. “Sumi,” he breathed, hope rent by anxiety, “do not risk …”
“It is a matter of honor,” Sumitra replied. Her demeanor was annealed of steel as pure and strong as the blade of Solifrax. “Your mother healed Dana’s father of a similar wound while she carried you. Such magic marked you, but not for ill.”
His necklace murmured against suddenly damp skin. “Yes, but I … Ashtar, Harus, have mercy.” His voice shook. He compressed his lips so that he would not speak again. He tensed, every sinew in his body as taut as the strings of the zamtak, quivering like them to Sumi’s touch.
Another rivulet of music, and another. Gard and Tembujin drew closer. Rue rose to her knees, her brows skeptically tight, wondering what trick Sumitra played.
Sumi’s face glowed from within, her eyes widened and shone with a dark luminescence. A wind stirred in the chamber, fluttering the candles and sending shadows leaping up the rock walls, lifting strands of Dana’s hair which seemed, in her extremity, to be spun not of gold but of brass.
The wind was the music, or the music the wind; Andrion could not tell. He knew only that the melody was as clean and precise as the wind that danced among the anemones in Ilanit’s garden. That Sumitra had never seen.
A faint odor of asphodel eddied through the room. The hair rose on Andrion’s nape and his necklace tugged at his throat, not in fear but in sudden exultation. Hope, healing, love, yes! He kneaded Dana’s hands and bent his face almost to hers, calling her name softly but urgently. His body strained toward hers, summoning her flesh that was his own. Come back, the world is cruel, yes, but in it are those who love you! Her grasp tightened. Her lashes parted and her green eyes, faceted like cut emeralds with strength and vulnerability, looked up into his. For a moment he was giddy, slipping down a long, smooth slope into her awareness; Sabazel, set in the devotion of its people like a jewel in a royal crown… . He caught himself. I am Andrion, King of Sardis, Emperor. I am, blessedly, Sumitra’s husband.
Sweat gilded Sumi’s forehead. Her fingers moved even faster on the seventeen strings of the zamtak, the melody quickening, transposing itself from a minor key into a major. The candlelight shredded, the room filling with dancing light motes that consumed the shadows.
Muttering something that might have been a prayer, Tembujin knelt beside the couch. Andrion hardly noticed. A quicksilver warmth flooded Dana’s hands. The cushioning mass of her hair flared gold. Her eyes gleamed and her mouth set itself with resolve. Andrion’s heart reverberated with the beat of hers. His cheeks blazed.
The bloody cloak bled in turn, the dark crimson blotches brightening into red, then fading. Odd, Andrion thought with one stray tendril of his mind, Tembujin’s hands were trembling as they unwrapped the bandage. He had not known Tembujin could tremble.
Between the rent edges of her dress Dana’s skin was whole, marred only by a long pink scar. Even the gash on her finger was healed. I saw such magic, Andrion sighed, when I was in my mother’s womb. Gods! Is it divine grace or human strength, only caprice to you but heart’s blood to us?
Dana blinked, amazed, and inhaled so eagerly of that fresh wind her ribs expanded like a fan. Then Sumitra’s hand slipped from the zamtak in a quick skittering trill and she fell from her chair. With a discordant clang the zamtak crashed to the floor beside her. The wind fled, and the candle flames stood unwavering in the still, dank air of the prison. The light motes winked out, leaving shadows etched beside every object.
“Sumi!” Andrion released Dana, leaving Tembujin to raise her from the pillow, and plunged to his wife’s side. She cannot have hurt herself or the child, his mind gibbered … is Dana’s life worth such injury, is Sumi’s health worth Dana’s death… .
Sumitra’s shoulders shook, her hands concealing her face. Tenderly Andrion pulled her into his arms and rested her head against his chest.
Her eyes glinted between her fingers. She laughed and wept at the same time, exalted and exhausted. “I have power,” she stammered. “I never asked for power. I would rather be home in Iksandarun.”
Andrion rocked her against his shoulder; her flesh, her spirit, precious indeed. Through the mist blurring his eyes he saw Dana sit up, inspect her body, turn toward Sumitra so completely disarmed that awe and bewilderment and gratitude were plain on her face. The two women shared a long look, a tangible thread pulled taut past Andrion’s face, finding their own common fabric.
Andrion’s hand on Sumi’s abdomen detected a tiny twitch, the baby somersaulting joyously beneath his fingertips. Only then did he grin and lay his cheek against Sumitra’s sleek black hair, letting the women’s thread of understanding spin without his interference, letting his own mind spin into thoughtlessness.
After a time he saw Gard sitting on the floor crying, trying in vain to conceal his tears. Andrion swept him into his free arm and held him close.
Rue’s eyes were huge shocked blotches in her face. She lurched to her feet, threw herself against the door and pounded until a guard, frowning suspiciously, glanced inside. He slammed the door in her face. She turned her back to it and slithered bonelessly down the panels until she huddled again on the floor.
Tembujin seized one of her baskets, tossed aside some flat rounds of bread and found a carafe of wine, which he tilted to Dana’s lips.
She abandoned Sumi’s eyes, and with a faint, soft smile drank. “How,” she croaked, “could I have so misinterpreted my visions?”
She did not accuse the visions of misleading her. Andrion replied, “You served some greater purpose, as Sumitra did, as I did, in bringing us here. Galling as it is, we have had far fewer choices in this matter than we thought.”
“I tire,” said Tembujin, “of toiling like an insect for some greater purpose which might just as well be a vile jest.”
“If we do not know Eldrafel’s purpose,” Sumitra said quietly, “how can we know the gods’? And they must have a purpose.”
Dana nodded. “I would believe that. Truly, I would.”
“But we do know Eldrafel’s purpose,” stated Andrion. “I have known it, I think, ever since the attacks on Tembujin in Iksandarun. He wants the Empire, and has not scrupled to use both Chrysais and Gard to gain it.”
The boy looked up, startled, the tears drying on his face. He might as well hear it now. “Of course,” Andrion continued, “we do not yet know just how Eldrafel will implement his plan. Why this elaborate toying with us, when he could have killed us right at the beginning and presented Patros with both Solifrax and a legitimate heir?”
Gard’s gray eyes were burnished with horror, not glee, Andrion saw with approval. So the boy had never realized that until Sumitra bore a son, he was the heir of the Empire. He shrank away, his face clotted with dismay; how could his new friend snatch his childhood so imperiously away from him? He cast about until he found the door, brushed Rue away from it, and o
rdered the guard to let him out. Frowning, Andrion watched the door shut. Perhaps he should have watched his tongue. But even a child should have knowledge of his fate, especially when it was likely to fall upon him soon.
Sumitra smiled against Andrion’s necklace, causing it to trill faintly. “Gard will surprise us with his strength, I wager.”
“As Andrion surprised Lyris,” said Dana. He shot her a sharp glance; yes, she was teasing him. Her humor was like rain after a drought. They shared a brief, unashamed smile, and parted yet again.
Tembujin distributed the food from Rue’s baskets, even offering some to the woman herself. With an abrupt shake of her head she refused. The moon crept beyond the edge of the window slot; the candles burned into heaps of gleaming tallow not unlike the heaps of rock on the slopes of Tenebrio itself. And here we are imprisoned in the belly of the shadow, Andrion told himself. At least we need no longer pretend to be guests.
The food was tainted with a slight flavor of sulfur, but still it was marvelously strengthening. After a time Sumitra wiped her lips and asked Rue, “Is this the shrine you served before Eldrafel married Chrysais and took you and Rowan to Orocastria?”
Rue seemed to think that if she kept her eyes stubbornly downcast and her arms wrapped tightly about her body, her fingers caressing her arms, Sumitra’s knowledge would evaporate.
But Dana ordered, simply and strictly, “Answer her question.”
As if summoned by a drill master, Rue’s eyes started up. Andrion suppressed a grin.
“Yes,” the woman replied. “My brother and I were born to serve the high priest, now the king, here in the shrine of Tenebrio.”
“But what of Taurmenios?” Andrion asked, envisioning the magnificently haughty statues guarding the harbor.
“Taurmenios is an upstart, a servant to the god who rose above his station and usurped the city of Orocastria.”
“Ah,” said Dana, “no wonder they were sacrificing bulls. In the older rites one sacrifices what is most valued.”
“Is it too much to hope,” Andrion interjected, “that it is Eldrafel who is most valued here… .” A chill, like the touch of cold fingers, stroked his nape.
“But Eldrafel,” said Tembujin, “said something about the rites of Taurmenios Tenebrae, as if the gods were one and the same.”
Rue’s thin mouth thinned even further. “A pretty story to amuse the peasants, who would otherwise think Tenebrio old and weak, supplanted by the usurper. But the Shadow never fades.”
The Shadow, Andrion repeated silently. An appropriate appellation for the god of this dark place. “And the rites that Eldrafel spoke of?”
“Once a year.”
“Here?” asked Sumitra with some alarm. “Now?”
Rue wrapped herself even more securely with her arms. Getting information from the woman was like carving granite one chip at a time. Or like pitting olives, close labor for just one morsel.
“No doubt,” growled Andrion. “How cleverly, how daringly, has Eldrafel timed his plan, to have us here when he wants us.”
Dana went, if possible, even paler. “To have us here,” she murmured. “Why us?”
Tembujin, with a sigh of aggravation, said, “I take it, then, that Eldrafel serves Tenebrio, not Taurmenios? He was dancing with the shadows around the altar in Orocastria even as the bulls lay dead.”
“I would imagine,” replied Andrion, “that Eldrafel works for himself.”
Rue glared at him. Of course, he reflected, squashing her glare with a stronger one of his own, everyone uses the names of the gods as convenient… . What had Gard said about Eldrafel’s birth? “Eldrafel, I hear,” Andrion essayed, “was fathered by Tenebrio.”
Rue loosened a bit. Her eyes gleamed, not with cunning but with zeal. “Yes, yes indeed. His mother was Gath’s sister Proserfina.”
“Proserfina!” Dana exclaimed, so vehemently that everyone except Rue glanced warily at her.
Rue warmed to her tale. “Taurmenios, trying to break the loyalty of the royal family to Tenebrio, cursed them with childlessness. But Tenebrio cares for his own. Proserfina was not the first king’s sister to conceive her child here, in the embrace of the god himself.”
Andrion almost snickered; Eldrafel was just smug enough to genuinely believe himself the son of a god.
“What a shame,” Rue continued, “that Proserfina’s husband had died a month earlier, so he could not participate in the rites.”
Tembujin did not even try to suppress his grin. “So the elegant creature really is a bastard.” And at Andrion’s caustic glance, “Of course, some of my best friends are bastards.”
Rue shot Tembujin a withering look. He refused to wither.
Dana was listening again to that compelling inner voice. “Proserfina haunts these chambers,” she said softly, “a specter of horror and regret. Perhaps she did meet a living god, although if so… .” She grimaced. “I know not. Again my visions play with me.”
An icy breath stirred the air. Rue spat, “You lie.”
“I do not,” snapped Dana. “Proserfina was here moments ago.”
Rue stood up, her hands clenched before her as if ready to ward off any attack, ghostly or otherwise. “Why should Proserfina regret being favored of the god any more than Chrysais has?”
“Chrysais?” demanded Andrion. “She conceived Gard here?”
One corner of Rue’s mouth twisted in a half leer, half smile. “Yes, your nephew has sacred blood, much better than the falcon droppings you claim. Tenebrio is strongest of all.” Again she pounded on the door, and this time when the guard opened it a crack, she managed to slither out.
The room was so silent that her retreating footsteps seemed to vibrate in the rock itself. At last Sumitra said, “She chooses to lash out at us. Do you suppose we have managed to plant some doubt in her mind?”
“If anyone has, you have,” Andrion told her.
Sumitra shook her head modestly. Over her smooth crown of hair Andrion met Dana’s and Tembujin’s eyes. Truly Eldrafel’s plot was as knotted as the maze of passageways, here and in Orocastria, in which he lived. His aim was power, of course. But how did he plan to achieve his aim? And why did those aims seem to be only the warp of a complex tapestry, its weft the incessant rumors of ancient, repellent rites? Gath dying in his bath, too soon for his death ritual—Eldrafel was not squeamish about taking the will of the gods into his own hands. And I am? Andrion asked himself.
“Now what?” asked Tembujin.
Andrion tried to shrug, but his shoulders were too tense. “Soap and water, I suppose, and clean clothes and sleep. If the rites of Tenebrio are held at the full of the moon …”
“Sacrilege,” muttered Dana.
“Then all will be revealed to us tomorrow night.”
“My lord,” said Tembujin, standing and stretching, “you do not comfort me at all.”
Andrion vented a short laugh of agreement.
The candles burned down to guttering nubs, unable to dispel the sooty darkness oozing in the window. The room was thronged with shadows—those cast by the four living bodies, by the specters of the past, and by some malign purpose that loomed larger and darker over them all as its time drew near.
Chapter Twelve
The rough gray walls of the room mocked its luxurious furnishings. The tapestries meant to conceal the stone only emphasized its harshness; their images swirled demonically beneath a patina of soot. The window slits were as empty as gouged eyes.
Rue cowered at Chrysais’s feet. “You lie!” the queen said, with a vicious twist at the serving woman’s hair.
“No, no,” whined Rue. “I saw it. Sumitra healed the Sabazian with her music.”
Chrysais thrust her away with a shudder of disgust. Her eyes glinted the shallow lavender of old bruises. The wine cup in her hand was half empty, her fingers still redly scabbed from the bite of Solifrax.
Eldrafel sat with his usual cool composure amid the silk and samite pillows of the bed. Above him hung a fi
ligree lamp, gathering the shadows like supplicants around it. His bearded face was cast in a pale gold, rich, smooth, hard; his hair, bound by a silver fillet, gleamed. “Simple trickery,” he stated expressionlessly. “As one might expect from the minions of inferior gods.”
Rue opened her mouth, shot a quick and cautious glance at Chrysais, closed it again. She sidled toward the door. Eldrafel gestured airily, dismissing her. Rue turned, staggered slightly, and with her arms folded around herself disappeared. In the draft from the door the wall hangings shifted and emitted a fetid breath.
Chrysais watched Eldrafel with a hunger saved from maudlin only by the dignity innate in her blood. Eldrafel’s eyes sliced through Chrysais and discarded her. They fixed far beyond the stone walls, surveying the world like a game board set in a significant pattern.
Chrysais’s white teeth bit deep into the lush crimson of her lower lip. She jerked her gaze away from her husband. The great sorcerous tapestry from Orocastria reposed in a darkened alcove, so tautly rolled upon its frame that it seemed to strain to free itself. Its colors were unmuted, purple, coral, and silver in delirious juxtaposition.
Where Sumitra’s hair had been sewn was now ordinary black silk. Chrysais looked back at Eldrafel, her sudden caution exaggerated by the wine into outright fear. Her mouth tightened stubbornly; if her quick intelligence knew who had removed the hair, her pride would not recognize why, and would deny it. But either Eldrafel had not noticed the change in the tapestry or it did not suit his purpose to care.
Chrysais drank and lifted a waiting carafe. “A shame,” she essayed, “that it was not Sumitra who was wounded; she would have died. Pregnant, she becomes not a decoy but a threat. Even if the child is a girl, those crazed Sabazians might support her.”
Eldrafel stretched, his muscles moving beneath his skin like those beneath the coat of a leopard. “Sumitra has her uses, as does her child. Her … powers only make her more valuable. How obliging that she has restored the Sabazian to health for us.”
“The Sabazian is her husband’s lover,” sulked Chrysais. “I would have let her die.”
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