Shadow Dancers

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  The bulls bellowed, milling about their attendants. With a shout, one was sent charging toward the dancers. A thunder of hooves, a vast intake of breath from the watchers; two dancers jumped, twirled, and died. The bull was upon Dana. Tembujin shouted some incomprehensible epithet. Gracelessly, she dodged—they cannot expect us to dance!—and felt the hot breath graze her neck. She could have swore that she saw, from the corner of her eye, Andrion flinch.

  Eldrafel leaped over the bodies, launched himself into the air, somersaulted and landed upon his feet. Perfunctorily, it seemed, his interest elsewhere. Another acrobat lunged, slipped, and was trampled. Two seized Dana, thrusting her into the bull’s path. Its crazed bellows ricocheted from the walls of the arena, driving like nails into her mind—she wrenched herself away from the cool, limp hands, stumbled and fell. The huge musty bulk of the animal whisked by her. Tembujin seized her and pulled her up. At her feet lay a young girl, red-splashed face twisted in ecstasy. Dana turned away, sickened.

  Tembujin crouched, evidently trying to consider the bull no more dangerous than one of his own obstreperous ponies. But Eldrafel was gesturing. The bull, with many lowings and stampings, was lured away. The dancers clustered, unnaturally bright eyes glazed with bafflement. The guards laid their burdens of man and weapon across the altar, so that Andrion was splayed out, blank face toward the vermilion sky, shield and sword arranged on either side.

  Dana stood suffocating. So Eldrafel was changing the liturgy; the blood of these pitiful children was not enough to slake his thirst for power, he was impatient for Andrion’s… .

  The soldiers beside the altar stood stolidly. Tembujin lurked behind the dancers. The tiers of faces swayed raptly. Rue flounced forward, lips parted. Gard looked unblinkingly upward, his face ashen, lips moving as if praying. The gory dawn drained away, leaving the sky colorlessly translucent; the rising sun was a suppurating sore on the horizon. The music swelled and ebbed in a fever dream. A scream swelled like a tumor on Dana’s vocal cords, just one scream that would break open the heavens and release the wrath of the gods upon Minras …

  Eldrafel danced about the altar, leaning over Andrion, taunting him. Andrion smiled. Eldrafel’s resplendent manner frayed. His steps grew faster and faster. Andrion ignored him, smiling serenely; waiting done, pretense done, an end at hand.

  Goaded, Eldrafel snapped and whirled, his fluid grace clotting into clumsiness. The luster of his eyes clouded with frustration and rage. He picked up a waiting dagger, an obsidian blade polished to a brutal glitter.

  “Tenebrio!” His smooth voice cracked. “My lord, my father, lord of darkness! Take your sacrifice!”

  Dana jerked as if slapped. But this is not Tenebrio’s altar—he has called upon the wrong god… . The ground shivered beneath her feet.

  Her mind careened from sight to sight. Tembujin in one lithe movement stabbed the closest guard and threw Dana the man’s spear. Even as she caught and clasped the shaft, she saw Andrion seize sword and shield and with a quick, taut grin ward Eldrafel’s blow. The two guards who had brought him in turned not to him but to the waiting priests. Of course! Insane laughter bubbled on her lips. Those two guards were Niarkos’s men, freed from the dye works; their hands were flecked with purple, as if by a royal disease. A guard struck at her and she lunged with the spear, impaling him. The music ceased abruptly with a piercing wail.

  Dana was not cold, but blazing hot. She stood back to back with Tembujin, skin rasping not unpleasantly against skin, sensing his glee as he fought at last. She knew her face was twisted in a sick intensity, she saw not the men she fought but Andrion leaping from the altar, Solifrax biting—impeccable motion, deliberate, meticulous—a filigree of white fire igniting the miasma, burning it off… . Eldrafel struck again, and his dagger exploded against the brightness of the shield.

  The Sardian guards defended Andrion’s back. Shouts arose from a gateway—yes, of course, it all seemed so logical now—Niarkos led his remaining men directly into the clump of skittish bulls and sent them stampeding across the arena, scattering soldiers and priests as effectively as much larger force. What audacity! Dana exulted. Andrion, you idiot, to take such chances to free us!

  The bellowing of bulls, the shouts of men, and Rue’s shrieks of calumny swelled upward and burst against the sky. Solifrax and shield danced in an intricate pattern around Eldrafel, driving him back.

  And Eldrafel’s perfect features knotted into a leer of outraged pride; the last vestige of his cool manner strained and snapped. He screamed. His body twisted, erupting with tongues of black flame that sizzled and popped against sword and shield and Andrion’s glowing face, that licked the altar and fragmented it. The rock, strewn with the red petals of amaranth, seemed to bleed.

  The ground rumbled. The arena, flickering with swords and bodies, the sky itself spun crazily. Dana faltered. A sword skinned a bracelet from her arm. Eldrafel called upon Tenebrio and attacked again; grimly silent, Andrion parried, but could not turn the black flames and reach Eldrafel’s vulnerable back.

  Mother! Dana howled silently. Let us end it, for once and for all, let us end it! Her nostrils stung with sorcery, her throat was clogged with sorcery, her hair stood on end with sorcery. She fell back against Tembujin, momentarily overwhelmed. He snarled some impatient comment on her clumsiness. Mother, her mind cried, too much sorcery, like spark after spark after spark upon tinder; betrayed Taurmenios, too, has a temper to lose!

  The floor of the arena cracked, a fissure zigzagging faster than a man could run from railing to railing. The earth heaved. Dana staggered, but then, so did everyone else. The hysterical bulls crashed through a barrier. A wave of panic spread through the stands.

  “Gard!” Andrion shouted to Niarkos, the herald’s trumpet of his voice cutting through the confusion. “Rescue Gard!”

  But even his voice was consumed in the tremendous reverberating crash that rocked the world. Every living soul in the arena stood petrified as the sound rolled along the sky and vanished. The ensuing hush was so absolute Dana thought the noise had deafened her. But no; she heard her own blood strumming her ears, and Tembujin’s heartbeat and the throbbing chime of the shield. And she heard Eldrafel’s gasping wail of dismay. He has gone too far, she thought. We have goaded him into going too far. And he knows it.

  The top of Zind Taurmeni disappeared beneath a roiling cloud of darkness that surged up and out across the sky, silent billows blanking out the sunlight like a shutter slammed across a window.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Andrion winced, his senses crushed by the furious bellow of Taurmenios. The grim satisfaction of battle cracked and disintegrated into the stillness. The thrill of Solifrax and star-shield faded into a thin warble of dismay. And did I never really believe in the gods? he asked himself lamely.

  Eldrafel uttered only one cry of distress. Then his lips drew back in a snarl and his eyes roiled as if with ash. A man would be frightened, Andrion thought between the waves of his own amazement, but this demon’s spawn is angry that neither god nor man will meekly bow to him.

  The multitude gathered in the arena stood like figures in a stone frieze, petrified in attitudes of anxiety and alarm, the battle between sacrifice and celebrant no longer important.

  The cloud swirled into mighty wings. The wings flapped. A sulfurous wind howled across Orocastria and flattened its inhabitants like reeds. The wind scorched Andrion’s mouth and lungs; even as he gasped, he was swept into a sprawling tangle with one of his own legionaries. Dana and Tembujin dropped, rolled, crouched in wheezing bundles amid the ash.

  The wings fell. Cinders and hot pebbles like drops of fire hammered across the stones of the palace and pelted into the arena.

  The first to gather his wits and run was Eldrafel. He skimmed through the infernal avalanche, shoving more than one of his own followers aside, and vanished into a gateway. Thwarted, Andrion shouted to himself as he leaped up, but not yet, by the short feathers of the god, defeated!

  Several peop
le were struck by plummeting stones and collapsed before they could rise. Soldiers threw down their weapons and scrambled for shelter. People screamed, struggled, fell, and were trampled in the stands. No time now to hunt Eldrafel.

  “Gard!” cried Andrion. He thought he saw the boy’s white, terror-stricken face carried away. “Harus, protect him!” He coughed, his mouth and throat scored with ash and with the foul breath of the mountain.

  The air seethed with a tangible darkness. Eyes slitted, Andrion shouted, “Sardis! Sardis, to me!” He lifted Solifrax as a beacon, but it was only an attenuated strand of light in the murk. He lifted the shield as a roof, and pebbles struck it in peal after muted peal.

  Andrion led the Sardians in a stumbling rush across the arena, over a shattered barrier, into a gallery beneath the first terrace of the palace. There they huddled in an alcove so dark Andrion could see little more than the various eyes glistening in the weapons’ luminescence. The proper number of eyes, he decided after a quick count, including the malachite shards that were Dana’s and the jet beads that were Tembujin’s. Thank the gods of someplace other than Minras for that.

  The ululating wails of the people of Orocastria echoed down the gallery, punctuated by the rhythms of running feet and the clattering of pebbles and cinders. Innocent dupes or corrupt accomplices, Andrion thought, how could they know that the forces they aided Eldrafel to raise could not be controlled? Something was poking him, like a stitch in his side—he shook himself. “Niarkos!”

  A flash of teeth. “My lord!”

  “Admiral, take your sailors, make your way to the harbor and ready a ship for us. Anything will do.”

  “Yes, my lord. My pleasure.” With a few brusque orders Niarkos organized his five sailors and plunged out into the gallery. “Take pieces of that barricade for shields,” he shouted.

  Andrion allowed himself a quick grin; the great sea lion was so angered by his humiliation in the dye works that he would single-handedly stop Taurmenios’s gaping mouth with a boulder, if his emperor asked him to.

  The star-shield jerked abruptly, almost dislocating Andrion’s shoulder. It emitted a few motes of silver and was answered by the sword. Shields, yes, he told himself.

  Tembujin, with unusual discretion, conducted the two remaining soldiers into the gallery. They stood blinking into the murk, working their way through the expletives of Sardis, the Empire, and Khazyaristan. Wisps of ash eddied around them and banked against the walls.

  The rattle and clump from the alcove was surely Dana’s jewelry, falling to the ground. Perhaps the dry, gray rain began to slow, or the shield and sword grew brighter, or Dana’s eyes flared with a light of their own; Andrion could see her smudged face, lips parted eagerly, jaw jutting, as she tore the ritual jewelry from her body and cast it down. He cleared the scum and the emotion from his throat. He slipped the shield from his arm and held it; compelling, the surface tingling to his touch and its voice a constant murmur in his ear, bearing itself proudly rather than letting him carry it.

  He set his teeth and gave it back. How patient Dana had become, not to have snatched it from him long since.

  She grasped the great disk as closely to her as a child and inspected it. Jangling doubtfully, it inspected her in return; recognizing her, it trilled a greeting. She slipped it onto her arm with a moan of gratification.

  Andrion’s outstretched arm seemed appallingly naked. His mouth quirked in annoyance, his brows in amusement. He tightened his grip on the hilt of Solifrax and slapped it against his thigh.

  “Do not ever do that to me again,” Dana said.

  “Take the shield?”

  “No, no! Lie there so meekly under the demon’s knife!” With a toss of her head she threw back her hair, its blond waves like fluted drapery.

  “I knew I could not disguise myself as a priest again. How else to get close to Eldrafel? But only his back is vulnerable.”

  “He would not scruple to stab you in the back. Or Gard.”

  Testily, Andrion replied, “I know that. I long ago abandoned any thoughts of honorable combat with him.” Solifrax carved a glimmering swath through the gloom. Yes, the holy effluvia was settling, leaving the air misted with dust and hysteria.

  Dana weighed the spear in her hand. “Where is Sumitra?”

  “Jemail rowed her over to Al Sitar, the little island between harbor and sea. We shall pick her up on our way home.”

  “Home,” Dana murmured. And then, hard and brisk, “All is not well at home.”

  “I know that too.”

  Her hand clasped his arm; look at me, I would spare myself nothing. “Do you know that Eldrafel stole your necklace and gave it to Gard?”

  “Yes.” Her hand seemed delicate, the dirt on it an anomaly, but its grip was impossibly firm. “No harm done, thanks for once to the caprice of the gods who ordered this game so subtly and so strictly.”

  She nodded assent, distracted. “And now—I believe Gard is in the throne room now, where we first met Chrysais. Years ago, was it not?”

  “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Thank you. Let us go get him.”

  “You go get him. I must rescue something else.”

  “Please?”

  Dana explained, “Sumitra’s zamtak was left in her cell, wrapped by that scrap of tapestry I asked her to make to warn Nikander. I must save them. A matter of honor, you see.”

  I could say too much, Andrion thought, and there is too much I can never say; words, delightful and foolish. He took off his grimy cloak and with an apologetic smile wrapped it around her torso, more for his sensibilities than for hers. He stretched awkwardly around sword and shield and met her lips in a kiss that was gritty, slightly acrid, and as inspiring as a paean.

  “At the harbor,” Dana whispered, strangled on dust and contradiction. She was a clear gleam driving back the shadows. She was gone.

  The air was growing cold again, riming Andrion’s damp lips. Dana had not said thank you for his care of the shield. But then, why should she?

  Tembujin, he discovered, had also shed his cursed jewelry. Andrion led him and the two legionaries up to and through the palace. It hardly seemed the same place, the garish designs scoured away, the columns cracked and toppled, and he was hard put to find the correct passage. They slid across the terraces in drifts of charcoal and stumbled over an occasional body so shrouded in ash as to seem only a desiccated husk. Indoors the thick twilight deepened to lightlessness, stirred by dust motes that danced tauntingly in the glow of Solifrax. The earth itself thrummed, and the massive stones creaked like wicker.

  Andrion’s shoulders grew tighter and tighter; something watched him. Many things watched him, he decided, including Tembujin, who took this expedition away from the harbor with ill grace and a continuous profane commentary. The two soldiers’ eyes were wide with caution, but they seemed relatively nerveless; not for nothing had Andrion had Miklos, back in Sardis, pick the steadiest of his command.

  Suddenly the dark, close passage evaporated into nothingness. They stood in what might have been a cavern, ceiling and walls suggested by a tentative luminescence, air eddying with foul breaths. The throne room, yes; Andrion lifted Solifrax and it flared, a stark white light defining like a lightning stroke the faded, peeling frescoes, the dizzying tiles damped by dust, the basin that Chrysais had stirred cracked and empty except for a coating of slime.

  And someone sat on the winged throne. Death, Andrion asked himself, surveying his domain? Almost; it was Eldrafel who leaned back negligently, legs crossed, arms splayed, fingers dangling. He was not even dirty. His face and body shone with the sickly pallor of the mushrooms in Tenebrio’s cave, each separate hair and lash edged with phosphorescence, each jewel winking green, blue, red, like spider’s eyes. When he saw Andrion his remote, misty gaze coalesced into resentment.

  Andrion shivered as if engulfed by a clammy cloak. Eldrafel, the inhuman beauty of metal and stone, except for the tiny unholy flame stirring in his eyes … He shook himself. It was so silent that fa
int cries echoed eerily from outside. “The pleas of your own people,” Andrion said, “that you have damned.”

  “Leader of souls,” crooned Eldrafel. “Shadow made flesh.”

  Andrion would have thought the man insane, except that he had never been convinced of his rationality. “Where is Gard?” he demanded.

  Eldrafel nodded. Andrion spun about. The dense black shadow of the throne did not repeat the shape of wings but was warped into the form of a gargoyle. There, in the darkness, Rue stood holding Chrysais’s jewel chest. She eyed Andrion with a maniacal smirk. Gods, does she assume Eldrafel caused this convulsion as proof of his power? If her brother is half the fanatic she is … His thought stuttered. Gard sat in a dismal crumple, his wrist caught in her talon of a hand. The necklace brightened feebly and then dulled again, just long enough to illuminate the child’s eyes glazed with fear and horror, his small features hideously withered.

  “Gard!” Andrion called, aching to reassure the boy, but he stared fixedly into nothingness. Solifrax flared again, shattering the darkness. The necklace sparked, but Gard did not react.

  Eldrafel stood, posing in an attitude of exaltation. His voice boomed through the chamber, shriller than the hum in the ground, but it, too, set the stones to trembling. “Pay homage to the living god come from the sea, bearing news of the unfortunate death of Andrion Bellasteros, King of Sardis, Emperor. Pay homage, as the legions will, to me!”

  Andrion’s gut twisted cruelly. Indeed, Rowan had been stirring his pot for months now, and it was high time for Eldrafel to go and see what had floated to the top. His comment to the perversely exultant face was short, ugly, and to the point; his mind flashed as bright as the sword, enraged. He leaped forward. Tembujin and the Sardians closed behind him, spears raised, feet scrabbling in the dust. Eldrafel gestured, quick and sharp, and liquid blackness splashed from his hands. Andrion’s left arm was naked; he warded the infernal blow with the flat of Solifrax, and the sword froze in his hand, burning his palm.