Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “We certainly have him at a disadvantage,” muttered Tembujin.

  Behind Eldrafel came Gard, plodding along on a pony, inching closer and closer to the cart. His imploring eyes, as achingly large as those of a tormented puppy, fixed on Dana, Tembujin, Sumitra in turn. Then Eldrafel woke, spat an order, and reined in the boy as impersonally as the horse.

  Eldrafel paused to lean under the edge of the canopy that sheltered Chrysais and Rue and say a few condescending words. Rue sat by the silk-wrapped tapestry, her body leaning away from it and Chrysais alike. But she and Chrysais looked up together, as they always looked up, at Eldrafel. Rue’s gaze was like that of a mole cast suddenly into light, blind and unfocused. In Chrysais’s moist blue eyes the tide was receding; they parched slowly into salt flats shaded by racing lavender clouds.

  At the end of the procession came a company of anonymous hooded priests, their dark robes a moving shadow under the sunless sky.

  Tembujin snorted in disgust. Dana fingered the linen of the shirt and the necklace singing between it and her skin. For the hundredth time these last days her mind unraveled, its fabric parting to reveal visions, omens, dreams, the patterns woven and rewoven. And yet these most recent images, while as clear as the vision of the assassination attempt on Patros, were much more remote. She could see them, hear them, taste them; she could not participate in them.

  She saw Bonifacio, his small plump form like a toad in the shadow of a taller being—Rowan, his cloak carefully concealing an armband that bore not a winged bull but the leering gargoyle of Tenebrio. Eldrafel had no doubt deigned to use the winged bull only because it would be recognized by the Sardians as a symbol of Minras and draw them hither. A joke at the expense of Taurmenios; those evil legends penetrating even to Sardis were not of him, but of Tenebrio.

  The shadow that loomed in turn over Rowan was Eldrafel’s. That much was obvious. Dana could see the fields outside the walls of Sardis withering, could see vapors hanging over the city as pestilence spread through its streets, could see the countryside far into the depths of the Empire itself blasted like this heath of central Minras.

  Sumitra was looking at her, concerned; more than once Dana had groped for words to explain her visions and had felt them slip like water between her fingers. She could offer no explanations, only the bare images, so that Sumi and Tembujin knew as much as she did.

  Another wave of sensation, undeniable. A sere and desolate Sabazel. Sarasvati returning from Sardis, the mythical chariots at her heels. Sarasvati holding the diadem of the Empire.

  It gleamed for her, the loyal daughter of Bellasteros, but her indigo eyes did not reflect its light. She spun about, holding it stiffly out to Ilanit and to Kerith, but they, too, could only stare, astonished and appalled.

  Had Rowan hidden it in her baggage? Probably so. Dana squirmed, hearing the faint, compelling whispers that Rowan fed Bonifacio: the ills that had befallen Sardis and the Empire were caused by the evil Sabazians and their demon-goddess Ashtar—even the assassination attempt on Patros was proof of their perfidy. Had not the princess Sarasvati been corrupted by them, and Andrion lured away from his duties? They accepted the barbarian Khazyari at their mysterious rites, and had even forced a Khazyari advisor, Tembujin, upon Andrion. Ready the army, march upon the heretics… .

  “Mother!” Dana muttered under her breath, “did not Danica secure Sabazel before my birth? Must we fight again and again?”

  “Clever,” said Sumitra, “to use Sabazel as a scapegoat, playing upon the distrust of an earlier generation. Was it Eldrafel’s idea, do you think, or Chrysais’s?”

  Really, Dana thought in exasperation, Sumi’s perspicacity was downright—soothing. She essayed a wan smile. Sumitra’s lashes fluttered. Tembujin did not blink, perhaps waiting for Dana to explode like an overripe pomegranate from the pressure of her Sight.

  Perhaps she would burst and spray them all not with seeds but with blood and tears. In a sudden gut-wrenching hunger she wanted Sabazel, the clean wind off Cylandra, the cooing of the doves in the temple, the small unimportant tasks of daily life. The company of women who were free of the stifling company of men. But Sabazel might not be there for her return.

  Her head spun. Niarkos, splattered with garish purple stains, lifted and folded a vast square of purple cloth. Miklos paced up and down the seawall in Rhodope, gauging the size of the moon. Patros, beloved Patros, more gaunt and stern than ever, bent over the desk in his study; Kleothera’s round face and Declan’s tiny one hung beside his, defined by guttering lamplight; Valeria bent protectively over her sloe-eyed children. The shadows about them swirled with Sardian officers, their swords licking black flame, their eyes dazed, sucked dry of rationality as the land itself was sucked dry of life. Bonifacio’s earnest drone hung heavy on air torpid with decay, “Sabazel must be destroyed. The living god, arrayed in Rexian purple, comes from the sea.”

  Dana shuddered. She clasped the necklace so tightly that if not for the material of the shirt, she would have cut her hand on it. Steady, steady, she told herself.

  Tembujin and Sumitra were still watching her, sympathetic and uncomfortable both. “It is just as well that Andrion could not kill Eldrafel that night in the temple,” she sighed. “He must live, so his plot can be revealed before the legions of Sardis, before Sabazel …” Her voice roughened. Steady! she ordered herself.

  “Bonifacio,” said Tembujin with a curl of his lip, “is only clean when the pond in which he paddles is clean.”

  “He is simply not strong enough to resist Eldrafel’s sordid intrigue,” Sumitra pointed out. “No blame to him.”

  “He has not even tried to resist,” sneered Tembujin.

  The moon and star purred reassurance in Dana’s hand. Andrion. He was still alive and armed. She had been with him on his journey through the cave, watching and hearing him like an actor playing on a painfully distant stage. But what he had discovered she now knew, and had shared with Sumitra and Tembujin.

  She had not told them of her chagrin that Andrion was visited by Harus while she had never seen a manifestation of Ashtar. Unless the goddess fondly imagined that the visions with which she harrowed Dana were such appearances. Only my deity, Dana thought, would make such relentless intrusion a mark of favor. “If Eldrafel is really a demon,” she muttered, disgruntled, “why do the gods not help us to defeat him?”

  “Then the game would not amuse them as much,” Tembujin replied.

  Sumitra laid down the zamtak and folded her hands in her lap. “My cousin Rajkumar had a story about Vaiswanara …” she began.

  Tembujin settled himself politely to listen. Any distraction, thought Dana. Children’s counting rhymes, anything.

  “Once, many years ago, the Mohan’s summer floods were much higher than usual. A man found himself sitting on the brush roof of his house, cut off by the rising water from the rest of the village. So he prayed to Vaiswanara to rescue him.

  “The water was lapping at the eaves when a boy in a dugout came by and offered to take the man to safety. But he refused, saying that Vaiswanara would save him. The water was licking at his toes when two men in an outrigger came by and offered to take him to safety. But he refused, saying that Vaiswanara would save him.”

  Sumi’s voice lilted, almost singing, her eyes filled with some distant vision of her homeland. “The water was sucking at his throat when a great sailing dhow swept up the river. The captain was already lowering a boat, but the man refused, saying that Vaiswanara would save him.

  “So the water rose over the rooftop and he drowned.”

  Tembujin arched an eyebrow, wondering what the point was.

  “The man came before the portals of Vaiswanara, shaded by the great bho tree where the sacred monkeys chatter. The god himself sat at his wheel inside the door, spinning out the lives of men. ‘My lord!’ cried the man. ‘I prayed to you, but you did not save me!’

  “Vaiswanara did not look up, but the third eye on his forehead blinked sagely. ‘I sent you a d
ugout, an outrigger, and a dhow,’ he said. ‘What more could you want?’”

  Sumitra glanced from face to face to test the effect of her story. And Dana laughed, a peal of sparkling merriment that turned not only the heads of the guards but the gilded crown of Eldrafel himself, gliding back up the course of the procession.

  Sumi’s mouth fell open. Probably, Dana reflected between the blessed gulps of laughter, she has never heard me laugh. But if I did not laugh I would surely go mad. Sumitra must herself be a favor from the mingled humor of Harus and Ashtar.

  Tembujin, with an obligatory snicker, turned and glowered out over the landscape. “What do you see?” Sumitra asked.

  “I am watching for a boat,” he stated.

  Dana emitted a giggling coda. “You idiot, we have our boat. We know a great deal more than Eldrafel thinks we know, about Sardis and about his sweet self. Our role now is to play dumb, to lull them into complacency. Remember, Andrion is free.”

  Tembujin fell back against the railing with a grudging shrug of assent.

  Just behind him Eldrafel said, with his usual rancid courtesy, “I am pleased to hear you enjoying yourselves.”

  Sumitra dropped her gaze to her lap. Tembujin made a sound halfway between a growl and a jeer. But Dana met Eldrafel’s jibing smirk evenly.

  His eyes flickered. She had the sudden feeling that he could see through her clothing, not to the taut flesh of her body but to the necklace she wore concealed. Her chin went up, her eyes flashed and crossed his with an almost audible sound of blade against blade.

  Eldrafel swore under his breath and spun his horse about. “See,” said Dana bravely, irrationally, “we do have him at a disadvantage.”

  Tembujin groaned.

  As Eldrafel cantered away, Gard slipped between the surrounding soldiers and leaned over the railing of the cart. “Is Andrion alive?” he hissed.

  “Yes,” said Sumitra. “Take heart.”

  The boy jerked at a peremptory shout from Eldrafel, his lower lip thrusting out even as his shoulders hunched, anticipating a blow. He edged away, just quickly enough to be seen to obey, just slowly enough to show stubborn defiance. Chrysais watched him as a prisoner would look through prison bars toward fresh air and sunshine, unattainable mercies.

  A falcon coasted high above, drawing Dana’s eye to a massive outcropping of stone like the crest of a rocky flood upon the horizon. The lumps of gray stone mounted upward into a corrugated gray sky, one indistinguishable from the other. The necklace tugged gently at her throat. “Andrion is there,” she told Tembujin and Sumitra. “No, no, do not turn around. But he is there, and he watches us, waiting.”

  “Waiting,” repeated Tembujin. “Yes, indeed.”

  Sumi, with a smile of strained serenity, lifted her zamtak and began to play. The notes pierced the torpor of the atmosphere and sang across the heath. “Green grew the willows along the sea strand/ Bright shone the sun as we lay hand in hand …”

  *

  The odd light distorted the small shapes of the horses, and carts, and human figures, as if Andrion watched the procession through the depths of the sea. But he could easily identify the blond head and two dark ones beneath the canopy. He recognized Gard, Eldrafel, Chrysais, and Rue. “Well,” he said, “everyone is on stage. Soon it will be time for the next act. But not soon enough.”

  Jemail’s dark sideways glance pronounced Andrion’s metaphor only further evidence of his doubtful sanity.

  Andrion shifted restlessly and the shield scraped against leafless, thorny scrub, emitting a squeal like fingernails over slate. Solifrax skreeled in response, setting his teeth on edge. The dense chill of the boulder behind which he crouched—worked stone, an old tomb, perhaps?—seemed to attract the oppressive air like a lodestone attracts iron, gathering a miasma that for a moment gagged him.

  But the fitful wind carried one strand of purity, the faint but distinct melody of zamtak and voice; “I gave him my song, yes I gave him my song …” The sound swirled away, but the sword and the shield continued humming in unison the rest of the verse.

  He smiled. Then his lips compressed the smile into a grimace. Gard, he thought, struggling with a paradox of blood, descended from Harus and Tenebrio, Bellasteros and Eldrafel. Rue, her faith sorely tested. Chrysais, her every emotion seared away except faith, but not necessarily faith in a god.

  Dana. He rolled over onto his back and lay flat in the gray ash and dirt, regarding the falcon swooping unconcernedly overhead. He tapped Solifrax beside him, stirring the dust to mist. Harus’s kiss still burned on his brow; had he been given a third eye like the one Sumitra attributed to Vaiswanara? But it was his mother Danica who had been given godlike powers, the last of which she had expended to save his life, even though sons were purportedly of little account to Sabazians.

  He cleared his throat hastily and looked again out over the heath. The procession was disappearing around a corner of the road, the faceless hooded priests shuffling last in line like the evil presence that had tried to follow him out of the cavern.

  The shield chimed, glimmered, quieted. Andrion knew he shared its resonance with Dana, that she moved in his thoughts as he moved in hers; he had heard her laughter as surely as he had heard the grim news of events in Sardis. He sat up abruptly, regarding the shield in gratitude mingled with resentment.

  Jemail had not moved. “Why come with me?” Andrion asked him.

  “My wine cup would be empty indeed if I returned to Eldrafel,” the soldier said.

  True enough. “I shall reward you in time.”

  Jemail eyed the pale glow of Solifrax and star-shield. “Well, my lord, we shall see about that.”

  Andrion allowed himself a grim chuckle. The procession was gone. Zind Taurmeni lay ahead, its harsh features still brooding down upon Orocastria. But now it had snow on its peak, and its profile … Andrion squinted into the hazy distance. A mirage, surely, that the mountain’s profile had changed. But he could swear it had bloated like a decomposing corpse.

  Andrion sheathed Solifrax and slid down the scree behind him, collecting a patina of dust. Ten more days before the rites of the new moon, he reflected; by that time he would be so dirty he would be recognized only by what he carried, without sword and shield as anonymous as the faceless priests… .

  Suddenly he grinned. Were there perhaps bales of old clothing in the palace cellars? “Jemail,” he said, “what can you tell me of the priests and the rites of Taurmenios?”

  Jemail’s saturnine face lengthened. Yes, he seemed to think, Andrion was indeed mad, but the god-touched usually were. Or vice versa.

  Thunder grumbled down the sky. Its low bass note struck a corresponding tremor from the ground itself. How, Andrion thought, can I possibly survive ten more days in this unwholesome place?

  He turned and followed Jemail, plodding away from the rocks toward Orocastria and the new moon, carrying sword and shield. Empire and Sabazel, honor and family like a snail encumbered by and yet a part of its heavy shell. Ten more days, twenty, a lifetime—he had no choice but to survive.

  Chapter Sixteen

  With a sigh of grudging pleasure Dana lowered herself into the warm water. Pleasure, to get a real tub bath after days of trying to wash in a basin. Grudging, for how could she enjoy herself when Sumitra and Tembujin and certainly Andrion himself were not afforded the same opportunity? And just why, she wondered darkly, had she been returned to the same chambers they had occupied when they first arrived on Minras, several lifetimes ago?

  Her jaw hurt from grinding her teeth. They had slogged through watery sunshine and sooty rain until she had wanted to run gibbering over the nearest cliff; gods, they had walked from Orocastria to Tenebrio faster than the donkey train returned them! Sumitra had tried valiantly to amuse them, singing and telling stories, but even her resilient humor wore thin long before Orocastria. And Tembujin—Dana grimaced. Tembujin had been reduced to answering every comment with a snarl, his lively tail of hair hanging as limp as the gutted skin of
a sable. At least the singing of the shield had followed them, at times close by, at times fleeing patrols, so distant as to be almost inaudible.

  She was sure that Eldrafel had prolonged the journey just to torment his collected victims, Dana, Sumitra, and Tembujin, Chrysais, Gard, and Rue. But at last the old moon had pared itself to a wraith and disappeared, and they had gained the crazy-quilt palace in Orocastria. Compared to the pestilential air of the caverns, the atmosphere here was only ominously oppressive.

  Dana let her hair fall over the rim behind her. She sank down until the water rose to her chin and wriggled her toes against the opposite end of the tub. At least the bath itself did not seem to be the danger. Although, she thought as she peered resentfully up at the frescoed sea creatures, she preferred the stark stone walls of the cells where they were now lodged, the same from which they had rescued Sumitra, to these painted bulbous leers.

  Her experience must be twisted indeed to consider a bath a danger. Sabazel! her mind fluttered, like a caged bird beating its wings against the bars of its cage. But not wings, no—wings were an attribute of Harus.

  Sabazel, demanding much, offering—well, not peace in return for loyalty, but a certain propriety—which must be passed on to Astra scrubbed as clean as the surface of the shield—the shield could not be dirtied by this swamp of passion and dread, it could not!

  Dana splashed. The sound of water upon her outer ear could not conceal the slow hum of the shield among her inner perceptions. Andrion was here in the palace; he had somehow managed to sneak past the innumerable sentries posted to catch him. Perhaps Jemail was hiding him in the cellars, where a legion could skulk unnoticed.

  The door to the suite opened. Dana started up, causing the water to rush over the edge of the tub and splat against the tiled floor. Andrion? Ashtar, if he comes upon me now, like this, I shall throw myself upon him like a starving man upon food. But no man, not even Andrion, is more important than the law—he knows that, I know that—he is Sumi’s, not mine… .