Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Chapter Thirteen

  All too soon the effect of the lethenderum wore off, leaving Andrion’s perceptions disconcertingly clear. If the priests had hustled him straight from this life to the next, he reflected glumly, he would by now be mercifully finished with reflection. But mercy was a concept alien to the nature of Minras. The priests had returned him here, giving him the leisure to fear not death itself but dying with his tasks unaccomplished.

  The remote, unattainable vault of the sky darkened into the transparent teal blue of evening. Andrion’s hands lay spread in a placatory gesture upon the cold stone windowsill. He clenched them and turned away from the free air of heaven back into the dim, clammy chamber, determined to placate neither god nor man.

  His bald account of the scene with Chrysais shaped Dana’s expression into contempt edged by pity; Sumitra’s into pity edged by contempt. His equally bald revelation of Eldrafel’s endgame sent a spasm of fear, then disgust, then defiance across each face before him, until at last he watched appreciatively as three masks of courage settled into place and three sets of gleaming eyes turned to him for direction. Surely he had direction to give… .

  Tembujin shook his head. “You almost have to admire Eldrafel’s audacity,” he said, outraged by his own admiration. “He has found a way to avoid his own death and in the avoiding win an empire for his evil god.”

  “You cannot know a god by his followers,” Sumitra said.

  Dana glowered, arms folded. “Indeed, I can believe that Sardis was once led to excess by youthful zeal, not by Harus’s true wishes. But Minras stinks of a demonic influence, not divine.”

  Andrion sensed her presence rather than hearing her words, still caught in that odd unity with her, an intimacy that was both intriguing and intolerable. There must be a reason, this all must have a reason—wait, wait … He could not take a deep breath; he was panting, they were all panting, chattering like magpies to keep from screaming.

  “What was the purpose of that charade with Chrysais?” asked Tembujin.

  “According to some customs,” Andrion replied, grateful for a brief intellectual exercise, “the king must be taken from the queen’s embrace to the death ritual, affirming his role as—you could say the generating principle. I do not know whether Chrysais actually intended to, er, consummate her embrace with me; perhaps she meant to at first, and then realized that kind of embrace was not what she really wanted.” He sighed; Minras did not lend itself to intellectual exercises.

  “Eldrafel,” said Tembujin scornfully, “would not have cared one way or the other. Just as long as the letter of the ritual was observed.”

  “As we fasted when we crossed the island,” Andrion continued. “For lack of food, not in preparation for a ceremony, but we fasted.”

  Dana fingered her new shirt and trousers. “They have even made an attempt to dress us in our usual garb. We needed new clothes, yes, but …”

  “Style, not substance,” said Sumitra. “Appearance is all.” She lifted her zamtak and plucked idly at it, as if seeking some magic combination of notes that would open the portals and free them. But the door did not budge.

  Andrion glanced again out the window. His own rangy body, while clad again in a chiton and cloak, seemed naked without the lost falcon brooch, seemed hideously vulnerable without Solifrax. But the power of the sword is in me, he reminded himself. That is why Eldrafel has waited until now to kill me—try and kill me, he amended hastily.

  “Is my image still sewn on the tapestry?” Sumi asked.

  “Yes. But without your hair it seems to have no power over you. Your strength amazes me, my lady.” Andrion smiled at her, in wan apology for ever having measured strength by force of arms.

  Sumitra asked with her own swift logic, “But is your image, and Dana’s and Tembujin’s, not on the tapestry at all?”

  “No, they are not. I suppose because as monarchs we must move freely, drawn only by trickery.”

  “Then you think we are to be sacrificed with you?” demanded Tembujin. “Surely we are meant to be more than just bait.”

  “I assure you I have no intention of being sacrificed,” Andrion retorted, his dark eyes kindling, “not to Tenebrio, and certainly not on Eldrafel’s behalf.”

  Dana turned, stamped away a few paces, spun back again. “Chrysais is no doubt enjoying the humiliation of Sabazel’s children.”

  “Not as much as she thought she would,” said Sumitra. The zamtak warbled. Dana gesticulated to heaven, refusing any sympathy for Chrysais.

  Andrion said, “Evidently they do not make such drastic sacrifice more than once a generation. Perhaps the rites vary from time to time. Perhaps no one really knows the rules of this game.” He realized his fists were clenched again, and his jaw was set so tightly his ears ached. “If only we can return safely to Iksandarun, by Harus, by Ashtar, then I vow never to complain about paperwork again!”

  Tembujin’s brows, black wings against his bronze skin, shot up under his hair. “Indeed, my camel herd looks quite appealing.”

  “I would gladly weed Danica’s garden all by myself,” offered Dana, “and clean out the dove roosts in the temple to boot.”

  Sumitra drew a flourish from the zamtak. “Ah, the interminable receptions for the councilors, the squirming courtesies of their wives. I would greet them all with open arms!”

  The door opened and a company of soldiers jostled in the doorway. The moment burst and emitted a cloud of apprehension.

  One soldier took Sumi’s zamtak from her hands and set it aside. The others ushered the four—victims? Andrion asked himself, and he answered, never—into the corridor. A corridor that coiled like a worm through walls of moldy rock, through air that thrummed with a chill and malignant vitality. Too many guards escorted them to even think of escape. Even if they had somewhere to go.

  Sumitra set her hand on Andrion’s arm as if they were entering a state reception, and he laid his own hand on hers. How could he leave her sweet jasmine kisses, her body, which was opulent without being in the least jaded, her placid spirit, and her steel-braced demeanor? Perhaps they would be rejoined after death—he had always believed that somehow Danica and Bellasteros had at last found peace together.

  Do not be ridiculous, he told himself. You are not going to die.

  Tembujin offered his arm to Dana. She refused it with a look that would have dropped one of his camels dead in its tracks. If I must die, her manner said, it will not be on a man’s arm.

  Amid the dank, uneasy air another breath stirred, a distant memory of free wind. And suddenly they emerged into the outside, into a breeze fresh from the sea. Andrion inhaled, thinking for a moment he could taste anemone and asphodel. The wind caressed his warm cheeks, lifted his hair from his head, murmured sweet nothings in his ear.

  On his other side Dana’s nostrils flared, and she almost smiled. And you, Andrion thought, blood of my blood… .

  The wind curdled and died, overcome by the chill reek of sorcery, sulfur, and decay. But that brief freshness, like the clarity of the sky, was a good omen. He would believe that. He had to believe that. He exhaled the scent of Sabazian flowers and felt his chest constrict.

  They were in a basin in the mountainside, an amphitheatre roofed by a vast pink and violet sky. The peak of the mountain brooded blackly behind them; before them columns ringed the rim of the basin like fingers groping at the twilight. In the uncanny light the rock seemed only a daubed backdrop in a theatre.

  Andrion and Sumitra, Dana and Tembujin, were installed on a dais to one side of the amphitheatre’s floor. Of the various soldiers standing about, spears dim gleams in the gathering darkness, none seemed to be Jemail. Maybe the man had not been a spy after all, and had already been put to death. Maybe he had escaped. Maybe he would come rushing in at the last moment and save them all… . No, Andrion thought, the man was too intelligent to throw himself away so rashly.

  The sky darkened into polished indigo studded by stars. A faint silver glow in the east presa
ged the rising of the moon. Eyes glinted amid the columns as if the temple was a beast stretching and awakening; Andrion realized with a start that the basin was surrounded by spectators clad in indistinct ash-gray robes. A slash of charcoal on the opposite side of the floor deepened, becoming a fissure like an axe-cut dividing the temple into two halves. A narrow bridge without handrails arched from one side of the cleft to the other.

  A figure stood upon the bridge. That chased-gold hair and beard, that marble face were unmistakable; Eldrafel bowed tauntingly to his erstwhile guests and made a grand, sweeping gesture to the sky.

  The full moon rose slowly, ponderously, over the rim of the world, reluctant to be called by such as he. But it came nonetheless. Its light painted the temple and the mountain not with Sabazian quicksilver but with a livid phosphorescence. The stars faded, the sky turned a pallid slate gray. Under its pitiless gleam the shadows were refined into dense, black shapes, tangible nothingness.

  Dana shuddered, sickened. Andrion’s necklace muttered against his throat. Evil upon evil, he wanted to scream, perverting the moon, making it not a symbol of light but of darkness… . His cry gurgled in his throat.

  A bull’s horn sounded in a low, eerie wail. The frieze of faceless watchers responded with a chant.

  Eldrafel gestured again. Robed figures staggered forward bearing a huge krater. The caldron was incised with turbulent scenes of war and death. Gorgon faces leered from the handles, tongues lolling, eyes rolling in drunken spasms. One priest produced what looked like a goblet, ladling into it liquid from the krater; Eldrafel took it, threw back his head and drank. He held a skull, Andrion saw, cunningly sheathed in silver.

  Sumitra trembled on his arm. Tembujin swore under his breath. The necklace hissed, tugged, fell back. Yes, the guards were intent on the ceremony, not on their prisoners, but how … The watchers began to file down from their seats and past the krater. Each received a clay cup of liquid. The chanting harshened, achieving a note of menace that curled the hair on Andrion’s neck. Every fiber in his body contracted in response.

  Two priests carried cups to a particularly opaque shadow at one side of the floor. As the moonlight crept onward, the darkness parted like a curtain. Chrysais sat on a throne carved with weathered winged gargoyles, Gard on a stool at her feet. One of her hands rested like a claw on his shoulder, whether protecting him from the evil ritual or trying to thrust him into it, Andrion could not tell.

  The boy was stiff with sulky compliance; his teeth seemed to have turned to granite, so tightly did he hold his jaw. Turquoise and amethyst weighted his narrow chest. Andrion thought, it is he who deserves pity. But something in the boy’s attitude refused pity.

  As if aware Andrion watched him, Gard glanced up. In the moment Andrion had the boy’s attention he winked at him, wondering as he did so if he promised something he could not deliver. But the boy loosened, forgiving the emperor for being related to him—not surprising, considering his meager choice of relatives. His pallor ebbed to an excited flush.

  Andrion laid his hand on his necklace. The moon and the star thrilled against his flesh; a message, but what, gods, what?

  Grudgingly, Andrion looked at Chrysais. Beneath her gaudy mask her face had shriveled; that youth he had once seen in her was now only cruel illusion, ravaged by passion. Perhaps she grew so weary that peace would be more welcome than any passion. But her eyes were anything but peaceful, darting in flat blue gleams from Andrion to Eldrafel to Gard and upward to the glaucous face of the moon.

  The many portals into the mountain emitted breath after cold breath. The sky glazed over with frost. The chanting was the moan of a winter storm, and yet no wind stirred; each robe and each shadow hung like carved drapery in the pallid light.

  Eldrafel swaggered forward and flourished the skull before the prisoners. “One of your earlier victims?” Andrion asked evenly.

  Laughing, Eldrafel drank again. Crimson liquid sloshed through the eye holes, gaping in a spasm of terror. A miasma of herbs and honey drifted from krater and skull alike. Dana sipped warily at a cup offered her by an anonymous robed figure and spat. “Wormwood, henbane, belladonna, thornapple, fermented honey. A witch’s brew, if ever there was one.” The spittle at her feet spun a thread of smoke into the cold air.

  Everyone, even the soldiers, drank deeply. Except for Eldrafel, who threw the skull carelessly into the krater, and Gard, who reached for his mother’s cup and had it snatched from him. Despite the potency of the brew, Chrysais’s rouged cheeks grew paler, not pinker, as she drained her cup.

  Priests set crowns of crimson amaranth on Andrion’s and Sumitra’s hair. Ice flowers, as heavy as bands of iron. Sumitra winced; Andrion took her garland from her head, was prevented from throwing it down by flashes of obsidian and bronze from the hovering priests and guards, compromised by placing it upon his own head. His neck started to bow under the weight of the two wreaths, and with an oath he straightened.

  Eldrafel pinched Andrion’s arm, testing his ripeness, perhaps, and wiped his hand on his robe with a supercilious sneer. “Here is your sacrifice,” he announced to the gathered crowd. “Andrion Bellasteros, King of Sardis, Emperor, brother of Queen Chrysais, who comes here of his own will to give himself to Tenebrio.” The chanting quieted, but remained a drone beneath the singsong rhythms of Eldrafel’s voice.

  “And another sacrifice to the glory of the lord of darkness: Andrion’s son and heir.”

  Andrion ground his teeth. Very tidy, to eliminate not only the current occupier of the throne, but any potential rivals. Sumitra shuddered, melding herself to Andrion’s side. He wrapped an arm around her. Sumi, my shield… . His free hand flexed, but remained empty. Despite the cold his face flushed hot; his mind spun, striking sparks from the flint of his will.

  Gard started, struck by one of those sparks. Of course, Andrion told himself, we, too, are of the same blood. He nodded to the boy’s grave eyes; something will happen soon. I will make it happen. His jaw ached, set as tightly as Gard’s. The notes of a flute slithered among the columns, repeating the storm wail of the chanting. But still the wind was silent.

  “These lesser rulers,” announced Eldrafel, “Khazyari and Sabazian, shall be sacrificed to a lesser god: Taurmenios, in the arena at Orocastria.”

  Dana’s reply was a muttered epithet, Tembujin’s an obscenity. So they were not in danger here and now, Andrion told himself. A mote of relief. His necklace coiled on his throat, amid the nervous sweat that should surely have turned to snowflakes by now, but had not.

  Eldrafel turned away from his captives. He cast his robe down. His body in the moonlight was a gilded idol, his jewels blue, purple, and green ice, his armband shining coldly. He wore only a codpiece and belt, but did not shiver. His languor fell away like a snakeskin as slowly he began to dance.

  “Hail, leader of souls,” shouted a slurred voice. “Hail, lord of the dance.” Eldrafel’s cool mien did not change. He stepped and spun, sewing light to shadow in a litany to his dark lord. The muscles coiled and loosed in his buttocks. Andrion stared, fascinated and repulsed, and fascinated by his repulsion; Dana made a sound part moan, part snarl. It was degrading to be compelled by beauty so flawed, and Eldrafel knew it.

  The music rose and fell, the piercing wail of the flute underlaid by a chanting so deep as to be barely perceptible. But the very stones beneath Andrion’s feet reverberated with the melody. It was just imprecise enough, making just enough irrational loops and glides, to be inhuman. The columns themselves seemed to shift, following the pattern of the dance. Step, step, turn. Step, turn, step.

  Andrion squinted. The temple was a bowl of cool, indifferent moonlight. The stones, the people, the krater and its contents, were the translucent gray of Eldrafel’s eyes. Only the shadows were real, thronging behind the priest as he danced, linking arms with him, repeating his steps.

  “No,” Tembujin said suddenly in Andrion’s ear. “He is dancing alone. Only illusion, that the shadows dance. I—I can tell.”

>   The frieze of glittering eyes dimmed, the insubstantial bodies swayed. Creeping hallucination, Andrion thought. Part sorcery, part drink. Chrysais sat motionless in her chair, eyes fixed unblinking on Eldrafel’s form as it threaded light to darkness. But Gard shifted restlessly, watching Andrion as if for some sign. Andrion should have felt foolish, standing there helpless. But his body was warming with a grim, lucid determination, his sinews winding tightly, his necklace dancing its own dance against the pulse leaping in his throat.

  Suddenly harsh bellowing blotted the music. Eldrafel beckoned. A huge strong-shouldered bull with long polished horns was led onto the floor, struggling with the six soldiers clinging to its halter. Behind it came a troupe of human figures, leaping and dancing, surrounding two shambling men which Andrion’s cold-annealed perceptions recognized as the two guards he and Dana and Tembujin had overcome just before they freed Sumitra. “Harus!” he swore under his breath.

  Whether the dancers were men or women he could not tell; all were kilted and draped with necklaces and bracelets, all in the harsh metallic moonlight were drained of individuality. They were very young, he decided, still in that smooth and slender early adolescence before the necessities of the flesh molded them into male or female.

  The music continued, blending with the bellows of the animal as its handlers abandoned it in the midst of the floor. Its eyes were bright pinpricks of madness. Its nostrils fluttered. Eldrafel pirouetted so close before its face that his hair brushed its horns. It charged.

  Eldrafel was not there; he stood again upon the bridge, watching with proprietary interest as the dancers ran forward. Surely they, too, had been drugged, for with ecstatic leaps and hand clappings they threw themselves at the raging animal. The two guards were carried along in the rush. They jumped and clutched, and the sharp horns threw them aside like fish yanked flailing from the ocean and dashed against a rock.