Warrior and wizard met in the midst of the tables and chairs. Grinning, Jofar made a halfhearted swipe at Gard. Gard danced aside. Again a stroke, again a sidestep.
“Put your back into it, boy,” growled Menelik, whether to Jofar or to Gard was difficult to tell.
Jofar swung, slicing the air. Gard was three steps away. Jofar lunged. Gard and dragonet spun as one. Jofar struck. His hand must have been greasy from his dinner; the sword shot from his grasp.
God’s beak! The pentacle thudded like a blow against Gard’s chest, pushing him aside. Dragonet and Gard somersaulted. The sword grazed his cheek and imbedded itself quivering in a table leg. Cries of alarm or approval? Gard could not tell over the hammering of his heart in his ears. The dragonet stood frozen, limbs extended, eyes protruding.
Vijay was pale around the mustache. Jofar stood with his brow wrinkled, his mouth open. Zoe peered out between her fingers and Persis patted her hand. Menelik laughed. “Excellent, my son. You almost caught him off guard.”
So, Gard thought between wheezing breaths, Menelik thought Jofar had cheated. And he approved. Well, I showed the Shah what I can do. And Tarek, too, if the wizard is still curious after today’s encounter.
Jofar sheepishly extended his hand, drew it back, wiped it upon his tunic, extended it again. Gard took it. A straightforward grasp, warm and friendly. But how much of Apsurakand lay in that massive hand?
The room wavered as if in the steam from the bathing pool. With a flourish Gard bowed and returned to his seat, to be assaulted by voices and requests. Could he find a lost jewel? Could he heal a sick horse? Could he conjure toys at a child’s birthday celebration?
The dragonet collapsed from its petrifaction, settling into Gard’s belly so emphatically his stomach surged into his throat. Strangling, he answered each query in the negative.
The priest of Hurmazi stepped forward and began another chapter and verse; the prophecy of Tarek, the day of the Sun’s Awakening, Jofar the glory of Apsurakand and the mysterious danger to the khaddi. Gard turned and peered accusingly at the doorway. But the show was over, the evil wizard gone.
Had Jofar’s sword slipped, or had it been propelled by Tarek’s power? Tarek was certainly plotting. But that plot was not necessarily against Gard in particular or Ferangipur in general. If Menelik was the object of Tarek’s shrewdness, such dissension in the enemy camp could only aid Ferangipur . . .
Perhaps Tarek had hired Bogatyl to sow dissension in Ferangipur. Perhaps Bogatyl had hired Tarek to make sure Gard did not return to Ferangipur. Just who did Tarek serve? Or who did he serve in order to serve himself? And how did Bhai’s mundane if not inconsiderable skills fit in . . .
Gard glared at his wine cup. The liquid boiled, foaming over the rim and leaving a crimson stain upon the table. Infuriating, how he had no evidence to suspect Tarek of outright evildoing.
A hand slapped his shoulder. The dragonet jumped with a flurry of wings. It was Vijay. The party was over. Servants were removing the salt cellar with all the ceremony of priests carrying a holy relic.
Menelik, Persis and Zoe were gone. The tiger skin lay crumpled upon the floor. Jofar was surrounded by dancing girls, their fluttering forms reflected in the gleam of his shield. Gard imagined Jofar crushing those wisps of girls beneath his great carapace, their writhings making only little curlicues on the shield.
He was offering to share his embarrassment of feminine riches. Senmut would be aghast, Deva might be jealous . . . “No, thank you.” He sighed. Really, his appetites were wraiths of their former selves, chewed by magic and doubt and spit out like spoiled prawns.
“Thank you, but no,” said Vijay.
Vijay, declining a woman? The prince looked with a peculiar puzzled expression after the departing warrior and his playthings. Then, realizing Gard was watching him, explained lamely, “None of them are blond.”
“Like Yasmine?”
But the Ferangi prince, enrapt by his own musings, did not reply. In Gard’s gut the dragonet inspected and fastidiously licked one sharp claw.
Chapter Fifteen
Muktardagh. Another city. Gard clambered down from the elephant thinking that the Mohan was like a child’s toy; lift the roofs from Ferangipur and find Apsurakand, lift Apsurakand’s lid and find Muktardagh. Maybe Giremon would fit inside Muktardagh, and the other Allianzi cities inside it, until at last, at the center, was a village able to field only one warrior.
Each city was poorer and more fetid than the last. Each surrounding wall was thicker, its stones of cyclopean dimensions not at all like the refined ashlar masonry of Ferangipur. The divine artisans who had made the nesting cities had brushes only fine enough to paint detail on the larger ones.
Shikar bowed to Vijay. His look lingered briefly on Gard’s red beard and his legionary sword. His lip curled with contempt. Kundaraja. So what.
The Satrap shooed Vijay beneath the brick-and tile-facade of his palace saying, “So you went to Apsurakand first. We hope you did not suffer at your poor accommodations. Menelik has no idea of comfort, you understand. And his manners? We imagine he questioned you about your family with all the grace of an elephant treading chaff. His slaves are hopeless, are they not?—spilling soup in your lap and hacking half-cooked fowl?”
Vijay offered a pleasantry or two to fill the fleeting interludes when Shikar breathed.
Gard glanced about the maidan. A few curious eyes met his, many sullen ones did not. Half the populace seemed to be soldiers. He allowed himself a cynical chuckle. Perhaps Shikar and Menelik would start a war between themselves and leave Ferangipur to browse among the remains.
He followed Shikar and Vijay under the gateway of a palace which would have been no more than a respectable inn in Ferangipur. The sentries had evidently been using the passage as a latrine; the dragonet fanned its nostrils with a supercilious paw.
Shikar’s voice, half bark, half whine, continued, “. . . Menelik would have no power at all if it were not for us at his right hand. Muktari warriors are recognized throughout the Mohan as the backbone of the Allianzi army.”
A distracted murmur from Vijay. His turban tilted right and left, pointing into every room they passed.
The company arrived in another banquet hall. Smoke scummed the hot air. Gard followed a functionary’s wave to his own place at the table. Really now, he was seated with apprentices and footmen at the far end of the room! He consoled himself by making the tableware dance a jig for the boys around him, and was rewarded by suppressed giggles from them and suspicious looks from farther up the table.
Vijay and Shikar proceeded to the required exchange of gifts, Ferangi ceramics and jewelry for a Muktari carpet. Hard to believe that something that brightly colored could come from this drab place.
The banquet began. No saltcellar. No peacocks. And the wine was slightly sour. Gard set his cup on the table. All these dinners were starting to run together in his mind, like a nightmare caught between sleeping and waking, circling round and round in infinite variations. I am tired of these games, he thought suddenly. I want to go home. Not to Iksandarun, certainly not to Minras . . . I want to go back to Deva.
Vijay sat stiffly next to Shikar, his cup rising again and again to his lips, his eye drawn repeatedly to the zenana screen. If anyone sat behind it, the beauteous Yasmine or an ancient concubine, she was well concealed. Perhaps the man’s imagination had never been stirred before, so he was incapable of negotiating a truce with it.
Shikar squirmed on his throne, first leaning toward his guest, then away, as if trying to expand and fill the khaddi the way massive Menelik filled his. But Shikar was a smaller man. “Persis presumes to direct Menelik’s rule of the Alliance. We advised her to be wary of that lout Menelik adopted—the son of our sister, he claims. Fortunately we warned him to prune the infants born on the day of the Sun’s Awakening, so the search for the children of the prophecy is considerably narrowed. And we sent that witch Amathe to Ferangipur, so she could stir up trouble there. Menelik o
f course pays much more attention to our advice than to the pronouncements of the wizard Tarek.”
Vijay nodded, eyes glazed. Sure, Gard said to himself. And I have some prime farmland in the Sardian coastal swamp to sell you.
“Menelik is desperate for an heir, true—why someone so inadequate as Persis can put on airs is beyond us—but much better to marry the daughter Zoe off to a worthy prince, and so name an heir to Apsurakand.”
“She seems very young,” commented Vijay.
“She is fifteen, just the right age. Only her mother’s jealousy keeps her from being married off tomorrow. Our older son, now, is ten, and would make a most appropriate husband for her.”
Aha, Gard thought. An attempt by the charming and self-effacing Shikar to move into Apsurakand, failing his attempt to move into Ferangipur.
Shikar teetered on the edge of his khaddi as though on an unsteady saddle. “But Persis knows her place at Menelik’s left hand much better than your sister Srivastava knows her place. Tell us, is it true that Srivastava rules Ferangipur in place of Jamshid, so powerful that she takes as lovers actors and gladiators, camel drivers and slaves?”
Vijay’s expression was as bland as custard, reacting to the insult by only a slight stiffening of his jaw. Bravo! applauded Gard silently.
Shikar assumed a more insistent stance. “Our wife Yasmine is a model of virtue. She was a virgin when we married her, all of sixteen, and so modest.”
Vijay choked on his refilled cup. His dark eyes focused abruptly.
Shikar grinned, yellow teeth appearing moistly in his beard. “Menelik gave her to us as a token of his esteem. Who would enjoy a poor stick like Srivastava when he has Yasmine to play with?”
A rhetorical question, although Vijay looked as if he would like to answer. He resorted to an elaborate yawn. Immediately, Shikar was on his feet, shouting directions to his flunkies—bedrooms, baths, pillows, fans . . .
Gard hefted the roll of the gift carpet over his shoulder. As they followed slaves into a hallway like a worm tunnel. Vijay grinned wickedly. “Do you suppose he uses the plural pronoun because he has intestinal parasites?”
Gard smothered a laugh. Ah yes, he did like Vijay.
* * * * *
The lodgings were, surprisingly, quite decent. Gard stretched, feeling his muscles creak. The clear morning sunlight had not yet been dulled by heat, and the air teasing his beard and uncovered hair was almost cool. In the courtyard was a terebinth tree in a large pot, its piercing turpentine odor reminding Gard sharply of Senmut’s workshops. Exercises—yes . . .
His diminutive daemon stretched and extended its wings. They were a blue-veined crimson this morning, as sheer as a courtesan’s gauzy dress. He stepped, bent, turned, twisted. Shakhmi, shakhmi. The dragonet repeated his movements. The scent of the terebinth and the feel of his own body, his own power, made him almost lightheaded. Deva, Deva. How could Bhai have no magical powers? Senmut was the most powerful wizard Gard had ever met. Or else, caught off-guard, he had been easily impressed . . .
By what? What had he actually seen Senmut do? Admit to an uncanny perception, yes—the old monk sensed auras, his bones aching—but he had not so much as levitated one pebble. Instead he made clever machines. Not pretty toys like Bhai. And not mysterious detonating powders.
The dragonet’s wings tickled his heart and strummed his bones. He stopped, arms extended and head tilted. Vijay was watching him. Gard inventoried his senses; all accounted for. “Nazib?”
“Shikar is pleading other business,” said Vijay. “Torturing slaves or something. He says we will talk later. Now I want to explore the palace.”
“Yes, Nazib.” The dragonet sat down, paws primly together, head tilted inquisitively.
They strolled from the garden, through the bedchamber, into the dim and narrow corridor and around several corners to a featureless anteroom. “Here,” Vijay directed. “See that bolted door? Several serving-women took clean linen through there.” Each individual hair of his mustache shivered expectantly, like seedlings just penetrating the covering dirt.
“The back door to the zenana,” Gard hazarded. “You want to find Yasmine.”
“It would hurt nothing to look at her. Imagine—the most beautiful woman in the world!”
“That was by the account of another woman.”
“Yes, it was.” Vijay’s brow furrowed. “Gard, I have been thinking.”
He made it sound like an exotic activity. “Yes?”
“What woman would praise the true beauty of another?”
“An old one, perhaps, extolling the charms of a daughter. One with a motive, at the least . . .”
Vijay waved away his reply. “Suppose those women we met were really—” he glanced from side to side “—goddesses?”
The dragonet’s keen glance stopped Gard from whooping with laughter. The pentacle ignited with a soft hiss. “And what if they were?”
“They promised me Yasmine. A reward for my courtesy to them.”
“Yes?” Gard said warily. Was Yasmine growing on a tree so that all Vijay had to do was pluck her? The door was solid oak, the iron bolt locked.
“This is a serving hatch, not Shikar’s door. No sentries.”
Gard managed to turn a snicker into a discreet cough. The young prince’s horizons had certainly expanded, if they now included the concept of a servant’s entrance. He touched the lock; it tingled faintly at his query. A simple tumbler mechanism—he had made one at Senmut’s forge. Frowning, he focused. The metal shivered against his skin. The lock snapped open and the bolt slid back.
With a grin, Vijay pushed open the door. They slipped through and closed it behind them. This corridor was, if possible, even dimmer and narrower than the other.
Gard’s nostrils flared and his ears pricked at the same moment. He snorted, blowing the odor of terebinth from his senses. Roses, and a fragile voice singing a ballad accented by cascades of bells. Vijay’s ears perked up. “This way,” Gard said, tiptoeing across the stone floor. The dragonet stepped stealthily across his stomach. Vijay walked.
Corridors, small sleeping rooms, windows overlooking larger rooms. There were several women sitting in a circle, sewing and chattering in quick counterpoint to the alluring melody of the ballad.
The singing voice was plaintive but clear; what it lacked in vibrato it made up in delicacy, blowing the song like a glass vase to contain the evanescent murmur of the bells. It was coming from outside; Gard peeked through the door. The sunlight was so bright he could see nothing, only a glittering mist as the fragrance of roses swept over him.
Vijay gasped. Gard snapped around. He had once heard a gasp like that during the campaign along the Royal Road, when the young centurion beside him had taken a spear through the heart . . .
The sunlight parted like an opened drape, revealing a garden banked with scarlet roses, the profusion of which was doubled in the still waters of a circular pool. A white swan glided forward to take a morsel offered by—
Yasmine. She was indeed blond—except for the goddess Kyphasia, the only blond woman Gard had seen since leaving Iksandarun. Her hair was spun gold floating over her shoulders, decorated, not confined, by a headdress of tinkling bells. Her face was a work of art, her eyes inlaid jewels, her lips shining cloisonné. The curves of her body were defined, not concealed, by the flowing pleats of a pale pink sari that fell past her feet to lie in artless folds upon the ground. Her hand and arm repeated the curve of the swan’s neck; her long opalescent nails held a bit of bread crust as if holding a pearl. Her entire attitude was softly appealing. She was very young and very lonely—Gard wanted to rush to her and hug her.
The dragonet melted down his ribs and puddled in the bottom of his stomach. He seized Vijay’s arm and jerked him back into the hallway.
And suddenly he saw Deva, her black hair bound into a severe knot at the back of her head, decorated only by its sheen. Her white cotton sari, its hem swishing above the firm brown skin of her ankles. Her fingernails
cut short and practical. Deva had to work; Yasmine did not. Yasmine is beautiful, he heard Deva say dryly. And like many beautiful things, trivial.
The sour remark of a plain woman struggling for beauty, Gard retorted. The joy that beauty brings to its beholder is enough excuse for its existence.
Twin maces smashed into his shoulders. Oh—Vijay was grasping them, his knuckles white. His eyes drilled into Gard’s so directly that for an instant Gard was sure he would see the dragonet sprawled beneath his heart. “Win her for me,” commanded the prince. “Make her give herself to me. Make her love me.”
Was that hoarse voice really easygoing Vijay’s? Gard wrenched himself away. “I am no procurer.”
“She is hardly a whore.”
“Shikar . . .”
“Slime demons take Shikar. If he cared for her, he would not have left her here alone and unguarded.”
The dragonet picked itself up and grinned, small white fangs glittering. “Rajinder . . .”
Vijay had not blinked. “Just once I would like to have something bloody Rajinder does not have.”
Do not be disappointed, Gard told himself, that Vijay finally sounds like a younger brother. “The gods themselves . . .”
“. . . promised me Yasmine! And I mean to have her!”
“You have skill with women,” Gard protested. “Why me?”
Vijay shook his head, turned, paced away, spun back again clumsily. “Not with this one. She is—she is enchanted.”
“I should be the one to decide on that.”
Here came the hands again. Gard dodged. In the garden the song and the bells trilled on, accompanied by a gentle splashing of water and the murmur of a breeze among the roses. In the shadow Vijay’s face was contorted with intensity—too much dignity to be piteous—too much need to be venal . . .
Wings of Power Page 20
