Kundaraja, the Ferangi called him. Lord of the Dance.
They had so far asked him only for small magicks, entertainments, bits of advice. The few times they ordered a repetition of the sword dance had been mockery, the soldiers so intimidated they did not even try to strike him. A waste of his talents. A relief that his vital forces did not have to be spent making magic.
Deva’s fingertips teased Gard’s back and shoulders, and her tongue made a circuit of his ear. He turned and bore her down, deftly sweeping away the bedclothes so that nothing was between them. He did have talents in more than magic, after all. Even if exercised for a meager audience of one.
They tangled and parted and met again. The dragonet coiled and stretched in Gard’s gut. Deva’s aura licked his face and chest, and translucent waves of the palest rose quartz enveloped him; she was water, and he fire, and she would extinguish him . . .
Too late. “Ah, Deva!” His voice sobbed in surrender, his body buried itself with sublime desperation in hers. Her power twined through his mind like a runner of morning glory. Blue morning glory, opening to the sun . . . The frail pink light of dawn was gone, eclipsed by murky cloud.
Gard released Deva and sat up so quickly the dragonet staggered dizzily and sat down with a plop. Whorls of dust stirred in the thin light leaking through the shutters, their impelling draft chill upon Gard’s moist skin. He moved ponderously through his breath exercises—shakhmi, shakhmi, and again shakhmi—oh, I am indeed possessed.
Deva lay quietly on the pillow, her body holding the shape of his, the tattoo on her breast repeating the curve of the scar on his arm. Any other woman would have lashed out at him with recriminations, demanding the reason for his sudden departure. She merely smiled, an expression of weary regret that sucked the blue from her eyes and left her ugly.
He should have felt virtuous at denying his addiction to her—addiction sapped the strength, after all . . . She made him feel like a worm. With an inarticulate growl of mingled anger and guilt he leaped from the bed and sloshed water from pitcher into basin.
Deva cleared her throat and said matter-of-factly, “Since you so stubbornly refuse to respond to my hints, I shall have to ask you. Will you take me to Apsurakand with you and Vijay-ji?”
He splashed in the basin and brushed his teeth with a frayed nim twig. The little daemon smoothed its wings, casting more than one accusing glare upward. “No,” he said.
“Why not?”
He could not bring himself to say, because I want to get away from you. Because I want to see if I am still whole without you. He said lamely, “Vijay is interested in you.”
“He is a man,” she said with a condescending grimace, which Gard felt rather than saw. “He has to assure himself that he is still whole without his wife.”
Gard spat and threw down his twig.
“Vijay is harmless,” Deva continued. “So is blustering old Bogatyl. What I fear is, is . . .” She sat up, her chin on her hand, her elbow upon her knee, and traced wrinkles in the tumbled bedclothes. Any other woman would have had the decency to be petulant, lip outthrust; then Gard could have shrugged and gone blithely on his way. But Deva’s mouth was set so tight that her words issued from the fissure of her lips like an eerie whistle of wind. “Do not go to Apsurakand without me. It will be a mistake.”
“I should stop making mistakes now, at this late date?” The train of water droplets was cold on his skin; he seized a towel and rubbed himself briskly. “You sound like Srivastava, drifting about shedding gloom like a cat sheds hair. Is that a warning or a threat?”
“I do not know. If I did, I might better be able to convince you.”
It was she who had infected him with the nagging sense that these days in Ferangipur were only a pleasant calm before a storm. But no place as powerful as Ferangipur need fear a storm. Gard threw down the towel, knowing she would have to pick it up, and dressed. Slipping his sword behind his sash, he contemplated the decrepit folds of his turban, mashed into a chair as if someone had sat on it. Well, Raj might never appear with a bare head, but he had standards to maintain. Gard, the perennial foreigner, had not. He left the turban lying where it was and took his leather pouch from the table.
Deva still sat in the middle of the bed. Her pose would have been provocative if she had been at all aware of her body. But she wore her flesh as perfunctorily as a garment, and her attitude quite spoiled the effect—as she no doubt intended. Sheer spite, for her to refuse to use her body as a weapon against him. She did not fight fair.
Inside the pouch was the slave-dealer’s seal. He could sell Deva any time he wanted to, even if he had once claimed her as wife.
The dragonet preened itself, eyes glinting with suppressed laughter. The pentacle muttered something exasperated. Sell her? Sell his own soul. Gard hung the pouch around his neck, dropped it down the neck of his jacket, crossed the floor to the basin and picked up the towel.
“So be it,” Deva said quietly. Her eyes—three slate-gray eyes, counting the overcast light of the sapphire in her nose—brimmed with tolerance and sorrow and love. He had seen his mother look at his father like that, had he not? Or did his childish memories color with decency those venal emotions that had been the true bond between his parents?
Gods! Women! Trials and tribulations! Gard sidled out the door and made his escape into damp diffused light of day.
* * * * *
Another day, another dinner, another durbar. The dragonet settled down for a nap, paws folded, wings furled. Gard seated himself on his cushion and tried several positions before he was comfortable. Deva always sat like a rose unfolding, serenely.
Around him family, officials and guests settled into their places like the pegs in one of Narayan’s puzzles. The garden beyond the pillars was colorless beneath a sky as pale and uncertain as Gard himself. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a harbinger of the monsoon expected in only two months.
As usual, Gard was seated neither above nor below the salt, but faced the saltcellar squarely, befitting his ambiguous status. The cellar was fashioned of a giant nautilus shell, the nacreous gleam cunningly sheathed in silver to resemble a Ferangi naval vessel. Tiny gold sailors swarmed around their cargo of salt waving spoons instead of oars. It was a construct worthy of Senmut himself, if Senmut could have been persuaded to make something decorative but useless. Gard lifted a spoon. He needed more salt in his life, to counterbalance honey and ambiguity.
The dragonet’s eyes opened far enough to reveal a thin blade of brightness. Oh, a tiny inscription on the ship’s keel. “Presented to Jamshid ed Jahangir, Rajah of Ferangipur, from his friend Menelik ed Allaudin, Padishah, upon the birth of an heir to his heir.”
Gard unraveled that sentiment; the occasion must have been Narayan’s birth, five years ago. Before the spurned offer of marriage from Shikar. Clever how Menelik had omitted any geographical location for his rank, implying that he was Padishah over most of the world.
Beneath the inscription was one word, “Bhai”. The signature of the artisan? The back of Gard’s neck prickled as if at the touch of witchfire.
No, it prickled because Bogatyl hovered behind him. Or thought he was hovering, with as much success as an elephant trying to leap like a gazelle. “Wizard-ji,” he said through his teeth. “There will be no sword-dance today.”
“Thank you, Vizier-ji,” Gard returned. Did Bogatyl mean his expression to be a wolfish grin modeled upon Tarek’s? It was a war of nerves, neither Gard nor Bogatyl making a threat, the absence of threat being somehow worse than open intimidation; Bogatyl could not have accepted the interloping wizard so readily, he must have some plan . . .
But the Vizier had none of the elusive charm of the Apsuri wizard. Tarek’s sophistication and Bogatyl’s bluntness were an intriguing reversal of the usual roles of Allianzi and Ferangi—or so Rajinder said.
According to the prince’s eloquent disquisitions upon the history of Ferangipur, the politics of Apsurakand, intent and belief and reason, it was t
he responsibility of the Ferangi to see that all the Mohan shed barbarism and achieved civilization. Whatever. At least Tarek had returned home to the Alliance—nice to turn around without falling over the man.
Although tomorrow Gard would be following him there. To scout out for Raj the mood of Ferangipur’s opponents, and to keep an eye on Vijay, and perhaps to—no, he would not intimidate any ruler served by Tarek.
Thunder grumbled down the sky and through the palace, its note repeated in a faint clatter of dishes. Good, the servants were bringing out food, squid, crab, prawns, and fish in various sauces. Not as lavish as the banquet of the Fool, but enough to make the monks of Dhan Bagrat weep. Assuming they were still human after their sojourn there. Gard had his doubts about Senmut. Though if Senmut had a brother whose name he cursed, then he must have some human in his ancestry.
Everyone had a brother. Menelik, the lion, had Shikar, the jackal. The beneficent god Hurmazi had the evil Raman. Rajinder had Vijay.
At this moment the younger prince was taking his leave of the zenana screen separating the woman’s half of the hall from the men’s, bowing to a silk-rustling, bracelet-jingling, presumably perfumed figure within. The women joined the men only at the Festival of the Fool.
Rajinder sat down at Gard’s elbow. “Are you well today? Not bruised?”
Gard stiffened his spine, trying to look moderately alert. Aggravating, how his thought today was as murkily mildewed as the sky, splotched with nameless and malodorous forebodings. Even the dragonet moaned in his gut, caught in nightmares of its own.
Gard did not mention to Rajinder how much effort he had expended in healing those bruises. “Not at all, Raj-ji. Sparring with you is an honor. And very instructive.” How, by Harus’s talons, did the prince mount such a devastating attack with mock spear and sword and still keep his turban unruffled? He might have been as splendid a warrior as Jofar if he had been able to spend more time on the field and less in council halls and libraries.
Thunder crashed even closer. The house poet tuned his zamtak and began to sing another Mohendra epic. Odd how often a crisis had been resolved by the courage and resourcefulness of the Ferangi rather than by the virtues of anyone else. “Would it not be interesting,” murmured Rajinder, “to hear the same stories sung in Apsurakand? Would you care to wager who their heroes are?”
“Not the Apsuri!” Gard returned with sham horror.
“Never!” exclaimed Rajinder, and laughed.
Here came Jamshid, supported as always on Srivastava’s arm; no one would dare confine her to the zenana. Her sari fluttered in a damp gust from the windows. Beyond her the dim shapes of almond tree and camellia tossed their leaves upward toward the clotted sky. Jamshid waved, nodded, smiled, and lowered himself painfully to the khaddi.
At last they could start eating. Gard reached for a prawn on the platter before him. Vijay slid into place across the table and stage-whispered the latest ribald joke. Gard laughed. Rajinder tried to look disapproving but failed. The prawn was spoiled. Gard surreptitiously spit out the morsel and laid the mangled body on his plate.
“After dinner,” Vijay said to both men, “assuming the rain has come and gone—early in the year, is it not, for such a storm?—would you like to go hunting in the mangrove thickets? Buffalo and deer, of course, and one of my trackers saw a tiger yesterday.”
“What fun!” Gard returned. During their last hunting trip the two young men had laid down their spears to go sliding on the banks of silt extending into the channels between the mangroves. The trackers had clung to the barges, shouting warnings of cruising gharials, but the mud had been exhilaratingly slick and the water warm.
“Thank you, no,” said Rajinder. “I have my duties.”
“Ferangipur will not fail if you take a few hours off,” Vijay said, and was squelched by Raj’s firm shake of the head.
Thunder rattled the crockery. The stones of the palace reverberated slightly. So did Gard’s bones. The dragonet awoke abruptly from its dream and sat up, staring wildly. Servants lit the lamps, but the light was brassy and harsh compared to the chill gray luminescence outside, cryptically neither night nor day . . . Will you go ahead and rain! Gard demanded of the heavens. Get it over with! Clear the air!
Vijay eyed the gathering petitioners as he eyed Raj, with exasperation. Well, the endless nattering of Ferangipur’s allies would drive a saint to distraction, let alone an unambitious younger brother. Already the village elders and the rulers of the small satellite cities were arguing over protocol. Jamshid had a tendency to start dozing, leaving Srivastava and Rajinder to sort out competing requests and cool clashing tempers.
With an exhalation too light to be a groan, Rajinder left his meal half-eaten, went to stand at his father’s right hand, and announced the first petitioner. Bogatyl leaned over Gard to sprinkle salt on a dish of cracked wheat which he carried to Jamshid. The poet stopped in mid-phrase. The petitioner began to drone something about a boundary stream changing course, transferring some of his land to a neighbor.
The lights were guttering. No, it was lightning dancing among the clouds, fire and moisture mingled . . . Gard realized that Rajinder was looking expectantly at him. He sat up. The dragonet sat up. They focused. No, not on the petitioner. The one to watch was the neighbor who had received the windfall of land. Although he stood to the side in a respectful pose, the faintest shadows gathered around his hands and arms, like the mud stains Gard had brought back from the mangrove thickets.
He picked up two sprigs of mint, held them crossed in one hand, with his other hand made a sinuous motion that veered at a sudden angle away from the leafy barrier. He pointed with his brows toward the neighbor.
Raj nodded understanding. “Did you notice an unusual amount of brush in the stream?” he asked the petitioner.
“Yes, Nazib,” the man replied, nonplused.
Rajinder turned to the neighbor. “So you thought you could dam up the stream and direct it to carve you more land?”
The miscreant started violently. Guilt rolled like the imprint of a cylinder seal down his face. The petitioner’s mouth hung open with gratification. Bogatyl’s face flickered, considerably less impressed.
As soon as the neighbor was fined and ordered to put the stream back, the next petitioner started whining about a question of paternity. He was a middle-aged man with a young wife. His oldest son showed too much attention to his stepmother. Gard shook his head, summoning amused sympathy. A situation ripe for trouble, that; he had taken advantage of it a time or two himself, back in his undisciplined days. Shikar probably kept his young and beautiful wife Yasmine locked in a closet.
Vijay yawned and began playing with the remaining food on his plate. More lightning was followed closely by an emphatic peal of thunder. Rajinder ordered the aggrieved husband to accept the child as his own and offered the oldest son a berth on a merchant ship leaving for distant Puntir. Next case.
And the next, and the next . . . Jamshid dozed. Bogatyl eyed the ceiling. Srivastava sat impassively behind her sari. The dragonet squirmed against Gard’s spine, its tiny heart tapping so quickly that at first Gard did not hear raindrops tapping doubtfully across the roof of the palace.
Rajinder sat down again, saying, “Well, that is over. I take it that very few of the petitioners had any magical spells about them.”
“No,” Gard replied. “Quite dull, actually. I think you have discouraged such practices, Raj.”
“No, you have.” Raj lifted a spoonful of soup to his mouth and made a face; it had grown cold during his absence.
“Papa!” called a small voice. Narayan emerged from behind the zenana screen and trotted up to the table. “Papa!”
“Ah,” smiled Rajinder. “The patter of little feet.” He picked his son up, set him on his lap, fed him a sweetmeat.
Voices rose from the multitude of priests huddling like sheep with garish fleeces in the back of the room. “Ah,” said Gard under his breath. “The heavy tread of the gods.”
/> Rajinder smothered a smile. Vijay chuckled openly. Narayan gazed wide-eyed at Gard, waiting for some bit of magic.
Absently, Gard juggled olives and pomegranate seeds. Random phrases from the quibbling priests leaped out at him like brambles snagging his cloak. “—three wives of Hurmazi, according to Harish the Wise represent lust, greed, and pride, humankind’s worst impulses pooled in its weakest vessels . . .” Three wives, thought Gard. The god was asking for trouble.
“If fate,” queried a reedy voice, “sets us on our paths what is the point of doing anything at all?”
Amen, Gard thought. He tossed an almond into the air and made it disappear. Narayan’s eyes glowed with innocent pleasure.
“The third surah of the fifth book of the flame of Vaiswanara clearly states that light drives back the shadow!”
“But the sixteenth verse of the second letter to the Kephalots openly says that shadows are drawn to light as insects to a fire . . .”
Gard squinted. No, the priests did not sit amid the rainbow hues of their auras. Not one of them had any real power. On the contrary, they sat in a fog bank of circumlocution, their earnest faces as obscured by haze as the garden outside the banqueting hall.
If only lightning would strike all priests and enlighten them into rejecting the capricious gods—if mortals refused to worship the gods, would they cease to exist?
A tremendous crash shook the palace. The world outside was consumed by a flash of brilliance. Every face in the banquet hall was scoured of any expression save terror. Women screamed. Jamshid started from the khaddi, calling for weapons. Gard’s heart smashed against his spine and shattered, showering the dragonet with bits of flesh and blood and flame. It was dark. Everything was gone. Ferangipur had been blasted into eternity at his whim.
But no, it only seemed dark in contrast to the momentary glare. The lights swayed gently. The serving platters reflected smooth halos. People looked at each other shamefacedly. The priests crooned, “An omen! An omen!” Narayan emerged from his father’s embrace. Vijay cursed reverently. Rain poured down into the garden, overflowed, ran over into the corridors of the palace and filled them so that sentries and cushions and jeweled decorations all spun like millstones, faster and faster . . .
Wings of Power Page 16
