Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  She skirted patrols all the way back to the cells. The subtle, invigorating purl of the shield did not abate, but remained an undercurrent to her thoughts, goading her, teasing her.

  She paused among the brambles at the base of the wall. Here I am, she said to herself with a hollow laugh, armed and relatively free; I could find Andrion without too much effort, and together we could join Niarkos and the others—I did not even have to destroy the tapestry to free them, it was done for me—how subtly the gods, or demons, work… . She shook herself, trying to pin down her pirouetting thought. I must plan beyond today and tomorrow, beyond the rites of the new moon—I shall not leave Tembujin and Sumitra to face Taurmenios alone—Andrion will only know where they are by where I am … Her thought knotted wearily. The fate of Sabazel is bound with that of Sardis, incessantly. Freedom? What is freedom?

  I have no time to be tired, she informed herself. That cursed greater purpose still drives us all. Decisively Dana called, and a moment later Tembujin’s swarthy face appeared over the windowsill. “Back so soon?”

  “I did not linger to start any fights, as you would have!”

  Between Tembujin’s strong back and her agility, it took Dana only a moment to scramble back up the wall and catapult herself onto Sumitra’s balcony. “Here,” she said, “I have something for you to do.” And she told them both about Chrysais and the tapestry.

  From his window Tembujin vented a heartfelt oath. “So she turned against him at last.”

  “She need not have gone to him to begin with,” stated Dana.

  “No?” asked Sumitra gently.

  Ignoring that quiet negative, Dana pulled the yarn and the canvas from her shirt and thrust them at her. Sumi fingered them, intrigued and wary. “Have you not been sewing a great tapestry in Iksandarun?” Dana inquired.

  “Yes. The eternal tapestry. Valeria and I shall be working on it with our grandchildren. I hope.”

  At his wife’s name Tembujin vanished. Ah, Dana thought, he has not mentioned Valeria or the children in ages; that wound must be deep indeed. He and Andrion both chose to mate themselves to cooing doves, while I, while I … have Kerith.

  The wall reverberated, as if Tembujin smashed his chair against the stone in frustration. Dana exchanged a doleful look with Sumitra. The demands of family; the world in microcosm, the purpose of everything, surely. Sumi cleared her throat in silent agreement. “What can I do?”

  “I see the pass at Azervinah,” said Dana, “where the Royal Road moves from the southern provinces to the north. I see General Nikander and his legions turning about in their march to Iksandarun, drawn back to the homelands of Sardis.” She frowned. Her Sight had only led her so far; surely, surely, Rowan would not dare to actually march on Sabazel. “Azervinah,” she sighed. “A good central, point.”

  Sumitra unrolled the canvas, removed a clasp from her hair and threaded a strand of silver yarn upon it. “The fortress atop a mountain? The one that Queen Danica took for Bellasteros before Andrion was conceived?”

  “Yes,” said Dana with a smile. Sumi was not, and never had been, gulled by the official Sardian story of that campaign.

  “Well, I do not know if I can—I suppose …” With a stern nod Sumitra stitched the outlines of the fortress. She threaded other clasps, leaving her hair to fall loosely about her shoulders like a shining ebony curtain. Her eyes began to gleam as she sketched a face, a falcon standard, marching soldiers. Then she laid the various threads about the canvas and picked up her zamtak.

  Dana leaned against the wall, arms crossed, satisfied that her impulse to pick up canvas and yarn was justified; in response to the purity of the music the threads rose like growing tendrils, dipping and weaving in an intricate dance.

  Tembujin leaned upon his windowsill, his haggard face slowly smoothing itself. Images formed on the canvas, the lugubrious face of Nikander, flashing scarlet pennons, and above them the outspread wings of a falcon.

  Ah, yes, Dana said to herself. Harus, the falcon god; a beguiling figure if ever there was one. Ashtar’s consort. She wondered with a sudden shudder if the gods mated as men and animals did.

  Men! Dana removed the dagger from her belt and tossed it to Tembujin; he ran the edge of the blade over his thumbnail, a wolfish grin transforming his features.

  Men. The embraces of Ilanit, of Astra, of Kerith, were unadorned and uncompromising. Dana slid down the wall and sat on the floor. The music squeezed her as a press squeezed olives, her body only the mortal husk, her mind the clear, sweet oil. That was what repulsed her, she thought. The grinding together of the husks to make dry and tasteless power, unmoistened by the oil of love.

  And stubbornly she insisted to herself, Danica did not sell herself to Bellasteros for power, as Chrysais accused. I do not sell myself to Andrion. We follow our hearts and our gods.

  The music floated away into the afternoon and dissipated. But still Dana could hear it, complementing the resonance of the shield. And she saw, suddenly, the necklace of the moon and star safely around Gard’s neck. Of course, as much as Eldrafel would be tempted to enspell Andrion, he was bound by his own rules to leave him free. Justice, for him to be caught by his own game. She leaned back with a sigh of relief.

  Sumitra’s face shone, numinous as god-touched Andrion’s, as she ran her fingertips over her tapestry and smiled like a delighted child at the vibrant image thereon.

  Thunder grumbled, not in the sky, but in the earth itself. Dana looked up with a slight frown; something seemed to brush the back of her neck, some vague, unnamable dread to add to the all-too-familiar dreads she already bore. And are you as restless as we, Taurmenios, eager to be cleansed of the touch of Tenebrio?

  Ashes wafted in the window, sloughing from the diseased skin of Minras.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Andrion lay prone at the edge of the roof, trying to look like just another decorative excrescence. The air was delirious with sorcery and decay. And yet this evening was different; the clouds moved sulkily off to the east, thrust by a faint but clean breeze. Andrion inhaled, wondering if he hallucinated that refreshing breath.

  A shimmering twilight illuminated the irrational pile of the palace but only thickened the shadows in the arena. The scene of tonight’s ceremony. At last, he exulted grimly. The waning of the moon and the nights of no moon at all had been an ordeal. Even the sword and the shield, exchanging brief resonances like the grumbling half sentences of an old married couple, had shed little light into the dimness of time and mind.

  Andrion scratched his chin. His beard itched from the soot rubbed in it, as did the hair that was by now starting to wave untidily around his face. He had certainly become unrecognizable, emerging from his noxious subterranean sanctuary as dirty and disheveled as the lowliest peasant. Harus, even a Sardian garbage midden would smell like a garden after those cellars!

  Jemail, huddled by Andrion’s feet, exchanged beady stares with a passing pigeon. Thank the gods for the man’s taciturnity, Andrion thought; if I had been sequestered with someone cheerful and talkative, I would by now have committed murder.

  Suddenly the sun glanced out, a gaping wound between cloud and horizon spouting a path of bloody light across sea, harbor, land. The clouds billowed scarlet and ocher and coral tinted with purple. The two mountains, Zind Taurmeni squatting close by, Tenebrio a lowering blot on the far edge of sight, seemed to shift and frown at each other like armies jockeying for an advantage.

  The mirage-blotted wing of cells where Dana, Tembujin, and Sumitra were imprisoned was fronted by a squad of soldiers. The terrace of the lotus pool was deserted, each flower a tiny blue flame in the valedictory glare of the sun.

  Then the sun was sucked into the sea. The lines of the palace thinned and blurred. The clouds retreated. From among a few pale stars peeked the faint, unbearably fragile crescent of the moon. The shadow of the old moon nestled eerily between the horns of the new; an ill omen, Andrion told himself. But then, this entire place was an ill omen.

&nb
sp; He scooted back from the edge of the roof and sat up, arranging the dark, hooded cloak Jemail had found discarded in the cellars. It was frayed and mildewed, but similar enough to the ones worn by the priests, especially after dark. Although Andrion felt rather foolish masquerading like a character in one of Aristofanis’s comedies, he and Jemail had already walked right by two boredom-glazed sets of guards.

  An owl hooted close at hand. More ill omen—for the Minrans, he informed himself sternly. Had Dana really seen Chrysais snap at last and destroy the sorcerous tapestry? He could not quite believe the image the shield fed his sixth sense. And he was vague about just what it was Dana had asked Sumitra to stitch—something about Nikander—well, he told himself, Niarkos is here now, we shall worry about his brother Nikander later.

  Andrion touched his throat; Eldrafel had his necklace, he could feel that without intercession. But at this moment, oddly, he felt no threat.

  He settled the shield on his back, in its harness knotted from several pieces of twine. Solifrax, tucked well back under his cloak, muttered impatiently. The shield remained stonily silent. Someone moved below.

  Andrion and Jemail threw themselves flat upon the ashy tiles. Eldrafel, gleaming like carved ivory, strode purposefully along the edge of the lotus pool and disappeared into the suite of rooms. Ah, thought Andrion. He thinks no one sees him, and does not bother to be indolent.

  The door crashed open, the sound reaching Andrion’s ears a moment after the sight. Eldrafel emerged, dragging Chrysais by her hair. The owl hooted again, the wind sighed, but from the struggling figures came no sound. Despite her undignified posture, Chrysais moved with the more composure of the two.

  Andrion tensed. She had tired of her husband, and he of her, no doubt, but what—Eldrafel threw her down by the edge of the pool, knelt over her, clasped her throat in his hands. She did not fight, but lay back as gracefully open as if receiving him as a lover, her hands caressing his chest and arms.

  Coolly, dispassionately, he held her head under the water. Her body shuddered; her hands slipped from him and fell slack onto the pavement.

  Andrion started to leap up, and caught himself just as Jemail’s hand seized him. For a moment he thought it was his own horror that caused the ground to rock beneath his feet. But with a ripple of thuds a row of pillars swayed and fell, and Zind Taurmeni belched a cloud of blackness that swelled up and out, covering the sky with an opaque pall, blotting out the last vestiges of light. The ground thrummed as if to a giant pulse.

  Jemail clutched the roof tiles like a flea clinging to a scratching dog. Andrion lay petrified; the blood drained from his face, leaving his skin clammy with terror. “So, Taurmenios,” he muttered, with more bravado than at the moment he felt, “you, too, are getting a belly full of Tenebrio’s priest.”

  But it was obscurely cheering to see the divine eructation take Eldrafel, too, by surprise; he stared up at the mountain, cautious and accusing, his hands still locked on Chrysais’s throat. Even here, apparently, the mountains did not as a rule make comments on the evils of men.

  Eldrafel threw Chrysais’s body into the pool with all the regard of a boy skipping a stone, wiped his hands on his cloak, and with a backward glance not at Chrysais but at the mountain hurried away. Perhaps his brisk stride betrayed a hint of nervousness. So then, Andrion thought scornfully, there are forces greater even than you.

  Jemail cast a bleary eye toward Zind Taurmeni. The ground remained still. The dark cloud lay like fog over the palace and the town. Other concerns were more pressing than the god’s indigestion. Andrion clambered up, organized his limbs, jerked Jemail to his feet, and sprinted down from the roof. He had ample shadows to conceal him now, and in consequence stumbled more than once over some step or angle of the confused architecture. Behind him Jemail clattered and crashed like an armored legionary mounting his chariot.

  The lotus pool emitted a thin cerulean light. Andrion skidded to his knees beside it, knowing it was too late to save Chrysais. She floated among the flowers, her upturned face as dewy and fresh as a child’s. The sardonyx figure lay just beneath her fingertips; in her other hand was a damp wad of—yarn, Andrion realized. Her open eyes were turned away from both, truly drowned by depth after depth of a blue serenity unattainable in this world.

  She had been a sorceress, yes, but also his sister, and the blood of Chryse, Bellasteros, and Harus himself cooled in her veins. Perhaps she had, in the end, saved herself. “Ah, Chrysais,” Andrion murmured, “I am so sorry.” Jemail ground his spear against the pavement, uncomfortable but not entirely uncharitable.

  A shower of fine gritty cinders rained down, leaving a crust on the surface of the pool which eclipsed the light it emitted. The wind eddied with decay. From the corner of his eye Andrion saw an adder slip across the terrace and disappear, following by several grotesquely scurrying centipedes.

  “They are poisonous,” Jemail hissed, shifting his sandaled feet.

  Everything here is poisonous. Andrion brushed the cinders in a swirl away from Chrysais’s face and closed her eyes before the darkness could cloud their luminous stare. He picked up the sardonyx gargoyle. Gargoyle? Had the amulet not been an image of Eldrafel? With a frown he tucked it behind his belt. He could not bring himself to disturb the peace of his sister’s body in any other way.

  He rose, and was somehow not surprised to see, glimmering faintly in the gloom, the ghost of Proserfina. She floated a handsbreadth above the pavement, as if the stones had subsided since the days her living feet had walked them. The spectral image was drawn almost too thin to perceive; only her eyes were hard and clear, illuminated by a cold flame. Her days of waiting draw to an end, Andrion told himself. He saluted her.

  Jemail frowned, seeing nothing, relieved that he did not. Torches sprang up along the terraces; their flames were densely crimson, contracted against the onslaught of cinders and shadow. The evening’s hint of freshness was devoured by a chill so profound it seared the nerves like heat.

  Another snake slithered by the pool, which was now completely covered in cinders, swamping the lotus, burying Chrysais as surely as if she were in a rock-cut tomb. A thin metallic piping began to wail from the arena.

  Andrion turned toward it and stopped, his mind sliced by a sudden subliminal screech of the shield. Dana, Dana sat with her head between her hands, straining toward him, warning him …

  “Come,” Andrion said to Jemail. They turned away from the arena and left the terrace to its ghosts.

  *

  I am a fool, Sumitra told herself. A blithering fool. So proud of that piece of tapestry, folded carefully around the zamtak; beguiled by my power as surely as Chrysais … An adventure. Indeed. Her thought spattered and reformed. Never even thought to be wary, on this night of all nights, of my food and drink. Rue did not bring it, I was lulled into stupidity, I have been drugged.

  The guards jerked the cloth-wrapped zamtak from her flaccid hands and thrust her into the midst of what appeared to be molten shadow. No, it was a line of black-hooded priests, avatars of the strange, palpably dark night.

  The guards, moving with the sudden jerks and starts of restive horses, did not pause to puzzle over Dana’s presence in Sumitra’s cell; they tossed the zamtak away with a jangling discord, tore the makeshift rope from Tembujin’s grasp, slammed both his and Dana’s doors and shot the bolts, leaving Sumi with an afterimage of two appalled faces and the echo of an ugly Khazyari epithet.

  We were supposed to go together! No, said one lucid memory. Eldrafel said only that Dana and Tembujin were destined for the arena in Orocastria. Unfair, Dana came back to the cells to help me …

  Sumitra’s mind disintegrated into cinders. The wind, which had been so encouragingly tinted with freshness, now wheezed with the reek of sorcery and sulfur. She choked, on darkness and air alike. Hands grasped her arms and bore her stumbling across a pavement and up a flight of steps.

  An owl hooted. A feeble strand of music coiled through the murk. The ground crawled with add
ers and huge centipedes, maggots infesting the rotting corpse of Minras. The guards skittered about, warding off the creatures, but the priests plodded on impassively. Perhaps they, too, were drugged, Sumi’s mind gibbered; that was why two shapes vanished into darkness and then reappeared, subtly changed… . But the gloom revealed impression, not substance.

  The palace was a tentative charcoal sketch. No, the drawing was of raw fragments, slabs, pinnacles of stone so dark as to be colorless. A slag heap, perhaps, abandoned by the gods at the world’s completion. Perhaps a quarry, the gods building a tomb. Sumitra staggered on leaden feet, carried by hands like shackles on, and on, and on, into the feverishly icy gloom.

  They were climbing Zind Taurmeni. But Andrion would be waiting at the arena, lulled by Dana’s continued presence at the cells. He cannot save me, Sumi thought giddily. I am going to die, and our child with me; obliterated in this dark place, unburied and unmourned—no, I will be mourned, anguished, ached… . She was numb, and fear and grief were only words.

  She gasped through the foul taste clotting her mouth, her cauterized mind so fixed on each inhalation and exhalation that only slowly did she realize she was standing still and the gloom was ripped by red light.

  Red fire. Sumitra gulped, spat, squinted. A fissure in the rock, filled with seething crimson reflections, opened at her feet. It was so like the one cleaving the temple on Mount Tenebrio that for a moment she swayed, disoriented, wondering if she had been dragged across the entire island. But here the fire was real, a hot breath upon her face, breast, and belly in stark contrast to the chill at her back, drawing a shiver through her body and gooseflesh to her skin. How could fires feed on rock? Were there trees at the bottom of the cleft? Why were they not consumed… . Her skin contracted again. She turned.