Ilanit smiled and shook her head. “I had wished that Ashtar had filled my womb at the midsummer rites; now I think I am pleased she did not.”
“Your time will come,” Danica told her darkly. “And think I shall soon take a vow of celibacy, after this my fourth babe.” Her mouth tasted like the bottom of the cattle byre and gratefully she accepted Shandir’s offer of fresh water.
The healer seated herself on the edge of the bed and clasped Danica’s hand. “I have thought you pale and melancholy of late. Why did you not tell me?”
“Perhaps I hoped to wake and find it a dream,” Danica replied. “Think; Ilanit was my first child, and all the time she grew within me I was never sick. But my other two babies were male, and my stomach revolted against me for three turnings of the moon. I have good cause for melancholy, Shandir.”
“You think this one, too, is male.”
“It is,” Danica said, “Bellasteros’s only son.” She closed her eyes on another wave of nausea.
Ilanit and Shandir exchanged a cautious glance. “And if you gave this infant to the neighboring peasants,” the healer asked, “as the others were given in exchange for female babes?”
“No. This child has but one sire; if Bellasteros did not find him, then his enemies would.”
“Will you tell him, then? He will not be pleased, I think, to find himself entangled even further with a goddess his followers despise; I spoke with his soldiers, remember, and not all of them would even accord Sabazel respect, let alone trust and the honor of a king’s son,”
“In time. In time he will have to know. But not yet. Mother …”
A soft breeze whispered through the garden and the shutters clicked together. Ashtar’s hand touched Danica’s face, and she was soothed. Sabazel yet hangs in the balance, daughter, but you play well, and you will win. Remind him of the sword of Daimion.
“Ashtar moves in subtle ways,” Danica murmured. “If I am to bear the heir to Sardis and the Empire, so be it.”
Ilanit sat down on the floor, clasped her arms about her knees, and bent her face onto them. Shandir continued to stroke Danica’s face, so gently that her touch was a kiss of butterfly wings. And Danica let herself float downward into dream-haunted sleep; a great ziggurat thrust itself into the stars, the moon set, and the blade of a sword gleamed amid gathering darkness.
*
By the time the message came that evening, she was feeling much better and had managed to eat the broth and bread Ilanit had prepared as a peace offering. She had even written the reply to Theara’s message, sending the courtesan Ashtar’s instructions and a packet of lethenderum.
“This woman, Lyris—she seeks sanctuary?” Danica asked Atalia as she folded the parchment.
“Neferet has spoken with her; she has been a slave in Sardis, she says, and escapes a gang of prostitutes sent to the army. She does indeed carry a horror about her.”
“So should she.” Danica took Atalia’s arm, stood, and found that her knees were steady. “I will speak with her. Perhaps she can tell me how Sardis takes the news of the king’s dalliance with … what do they call me, do you suppose?”
“I would rather not,” Atalia grimaced. “Shall I come with you?”
“You can wait outside; she will be more comfortable with one inquisitor, I think.”
The sun had just dipped over the horizon, and a lilac glow still hung in the western sky. The streets were quiet, children called inside for their suppers, and the guards at the Horn Gate leaned reflectively on their spears. Cylandra wore an aureole of silver as the full moon climbed her eastern flank.
Two of the old priestesses met Danica and Atalia on the steps of the temple. “She was weary, having walked for weeks on end,” one said. “We gave her food and a pallet in the small room yonder,” said the other.
Danica nodded her thanks. She entered the dimly lit temple alone and paused as a movement caught the corner of her eye. A mist lay over the pool, shadows streaming upward from the water, phantom wings. The mosaic shifted, the tiles tumbling themselves every which way in some frantic effort to form a picture. Danica walked warily to the edge of the pool and knelt on its coping. The mist was dark and thick—no, there. A figure. A grave smile and eyes bright with a quiet conviction. Hands open and filled with asphodel as dry and brown as a funeral wreath.
Viridis. Of course, Danica had been speaking of her; of course she would see her. But the back of her neck prickled in warning. Slowly she stood, cursing the lassitude with which her pregnancy had afflicted her, and she pulled her nerves and muscles into the singing tautness that alertness demanded.
The woman Lyris lay on the pallet, flat on her back, her arm over her eyes, reminding Danica of the way Bellasteros had lain defeated. Something about the posture disturbed her; it was unfeminine, wrong. She stepped inside the room and lifted the feeble oil lamp from its niche by the door. “Greeting,” she said quietly. “You have come safely to Sabazel, sanctuary and a new life. I am Danica, ruler.”
Lyris’s hand twitched, her fingers crawling like spiders across the coverlet. Her arm dropped from her face and for a moment her oddly translucent eyes rolled in their sockets. Then the pupils dilated, the irises steadied, and the woman sat up. She was pitifully thin, her chin and cheekbones as sharp as the beak of a bird of prey. Her hair straggled tangled and dirty over her shoulders; her garments clung like tattered grave wrappings to her bones. Yet there was the spark of gold at her throat.
Despite her misgivings Danica extended her hand in welcome. Atalia was right, a horror hung about this woman, some deep and mortal fear, as if her spirit were buried alive in a rockcut tomb and only her shade walked the waking world.
“Danica,” Lyris said. Her voice was weak, distant. She staggered to her feet, faltered, began to fall.
Danica reached out to help her. Lyris’s body closed around itself, regaining control; deliberately she fell against Danica’s knees. The lamp went flying, landing on the pallet with a splash of oil and fire, and blue flames leaped instantly upward.
Danica’s taut body did not crumple but hit the floor and bounced up again, crouched for battle. But Lyris was strong—too strong for her emaciated condition—and her elbow struck Danica’s midriff in a vicious blow.
Danica’s breath hissed from her lungs in a gasp, and her queasy stomach surged into her throat. Even as she fell she ordered herself to roll, ready to rise again, but Lyris’s hands closed like talons around her arms and Lyris’s eyes glittered darkly a handsbreath from her face. The look was a stiletto thrust deep into her mind, and with a gasp of pain she collapsed backward.
It should have been a simple matter to toss her assailant away from her, but Danica’s body no longer responded to her thought; her finely honed muscles were as limp as spun flax. The odor of unguents, natron, and decay emanated from Lyris’s form, choking her, and she could not regain the breath she had lost. Atalia—Atalia was outside. Her voice was only a faint gurgle in her throat. The glittering eyes laughed at her, reflecting the blue flame that leaped and hissed but did not consume the pallet.
Lyris drew back, and still Danica could not move. Mother, what—? But it was an effort just to remember her own name, where she was, what office she held; her thoughts crawled through putrefying ooze, seeking air and light. The stranger’s voice no longer hesitated but was deep and resonant. “Queen of Sabazel, Ashtar’s daughter, who dares dispute the power of almighty Harus …”
Mother! Lyris reached to her throat and removed the gold chain that hung there. She bent and wrapped the chain securely around Danica’s ankles. “Golden jesses, my queen. A gift from the falcon.”
Mother, no! Lyris was dragging her inert form away from the coldly blazing fire. “No, you will not burn, though that is the preferred death for witches. You will die like a rat before the eyes of your false goddess.”
How shameful. No—such thoughts were not hers. Danica closed her eyes, spiraling downward into her own mind, tracing the threads of her thought. Her head
bumped over the doorsill but she hardly felt it. It was a spell that held her, and a spell could be broken; desperately she searched through the nerves and tendons of her own body, summoning at least some small measure of her former strength. She managed to writhe feebly against the chain.
Lyris smiled, cruelly complacent, and jerked the chain so sharply that pain exploded in Danica’s legs. The pain cut through the ooze clogging her mind; Mother, as you sent the princess Viridis to warn me, send her now to help me!
Lyris jerked Danica to the edge of the pool, seized her arm, and pulled her onto the coping. The shadowy mist engulfed her and she struggled again. It was too late. Lyris pushed, and Danica fell helplessly into the water. Her mouth and nose and eyes filled; she seemed to fall down, down into some dark crevasse, suffocating. Viridis—the falcon must not kill again—this time to kill your own grandchild, Viridis.
Even as her breath rattled in her lungs the tiles shifted beneath her cheek. From the skylight above her fell a pale luminescence, moonlight and yet not the normal light of the moon. A wind rippled through the shadows and the mist dissipated. The transparent form of a woman floated above the pool, bending, her pale hands reaching out and scattering dried leaves of asphodel upon the drowning woman. With a crack the chain shattered, its individual links piercing the surface of the water and pattering down like a golden shower on the edges of the pool.
And Danica surged upward, her strength restored in one sudden flood of light. Without pausing for a deep breath she threw herself at the still form of Lyris. The woman fell back, her mouth dropping open in a wail of dismay. Her eyes went blank. Danica bore her onto the floor but she did not resist; her body was as limp as Danica’s had been a few moments before.
“Atalia!” Danica shouted, and she spat water from her mouth. “Atalia!” Her second cry had hardly left her mouth before Atalia was there, and the dagger that marked her weapons master pressed against Lyris’s throat.
“What—” she began, but Danica signed her to silence. The two priestesses fell to their knees in the doorway.
The moon-silvered figure of Viridis still hovered above the pool. The distant lights that were her eyes sparked. Her hand beckoned, and Lyris moaned, the sound wrenched not from her throat but from her soul. Her body trembled and her eyes rolled back in their sockets.
A phosphorescence gathered about her, shaping itself to her form and then shifting. A man, strong, twisted … Viridis beckoned again, and the man-shape struggled against her, its teeth slashing around it, its form flickering with hellfire. Atalia removed her knife from Lyris’s throat and cut at the demon, but her blade moved with harmless sparklings through its shape.
Danica’s grasp of Lyris’s body gentled into an embrace, trying to protect the young woman as she thrashed in agony. It must be Gerlac, she told herself; a hatred from beyond the grave. Again her stomach heaved, and she forced it down.
The man-shape grew larger, its sickly glow touching the faces that watched it with a pale miasma of death.
Viridis beckoned a third time, peremptorily, her eyes flashing. The demon shrieked as its limbs shredded from its torso, as its face peeled away. Like a guttering candle flame the demon flicked in and out of this world, not here, not gone … Its form winked out. A cool wind, fresh with the scent of Cylandra’s ice-crown, scoured the temple clean of the stench of the demon’s tomb. The water of the pool surged briefly over the rim, gathering in the separate golden links.
Yet the demon still existed, though weakened, on some distant plane. Danica frowned, not liking what she sensed, not liking her ability to sense it … At this moment she could do nothing more. She bowed, numb, over the girl’s head.
Lyris sobbed against Danica’s breast. The two priestesses stumbled to their feet and hurried to the small room; the fire was the small yellow flame of a spilled oil lamp, quickly extinguished.
“Sanctuary,” Danica murmured to Lyris. “Sanctuary, here, in Sabazel.” She raised her eyes to the shining form of the martyred princess. “My thanks. A thousand times my thanks.”
Viridis raised her hands upward, toward the bright roundness of the moon. Her image wavered, grew fainter, vanished. Only the soft, clear tones of her voice remained, drifting down the distant chimes of the wind: “Danica, to you I commend my child and his line.”
Atalia exhaled and reclaimed her dagger. The mosaic at the bottom of the pool sighed, shifting quietly into a pattern of linked gold wires—the chain, knit together once again gleamed softly beneath water that danced with moonlight and starshine.
The talons of Harus were strong indeed, Danica herself. Stronger than she had seen in her worst nightmare. She was seized by a fit of shivering, her wet clothes and hair like ice against her body, her thoughts echoing hollowly through her mind. She slumped to the floor beside Lyris. She would cry, too, but she was much too tired and much too frightened for tears to help.
Atalia was calling for Shandir, and lamps, and hot wine, but to Danica her voice was as faint as the buzz of an insect. The goddess whispered. The game is joined again. A worthy opponent, daughter, but you have checked his move. The next is ours. And it seemed as if a warm breath drove away the chill.
*
A gale blasted Sardis, howling down from the west as the moon mounted higher into an indigo sky. Adrastes Falco stood on the uppermost terrace of Harus’s ziggurat, his robes whipping around him, Declan crouching pale at his side; although the wind pushed at him, as if it would throw him down from his own mountain, he stood steady and defiant. “You are strong, Ashtar,” he shouted, “but almighty Harus will yet prevail!”
The gleaming circle of the full moon winked in and out scudding cloud; the moon, Ashtar’s implacable gaze.
Chapter Seven
Bellasteros knew he was dreaming. This particular dream had caught him more than once of late. But, struggle as he might, he could not escape it.
He walked, naked, cold, alone, through a dark passageway. He was shamed somehow, smarting and frightened. What had happened to bring him to this pass? He could not remember. He had lost the Empire, perhaps; perhaps his followers had discovered the secret of his birth. Each step he took was like a sword thrust deep into his vitals … but something chased him, and he could not stop to rest.
Chittering shapes swooped by him, brushing his face with leathery wings. The ground underfoot crawled with a living slime that grasped at his ankles. The cave, the tomb—whatever it was—the passageway stretched darkly on into infinity.
But no—a light shone, feebly, far ahead of him. He summoned the last of his strength and struggled toward it. The light brightened, shaping itself into an arched doorway. Beyond it Bellasteros glimpsed the spreading limbs of a tree. Something shone among the dancing green leaves; the tree was green and gold and supple, like Danica. Danica.
He reached the doorway, his hands reached out to the open air, to freedom. And strong arms seized him, pulling him back into darkness. He was choking, his mouth and nostrils filled with the stench of the grave, of funeral unguents, natron, and decay. Desperately he tried to throw off the grasp of the demon, turning … The twisted face of Gerlac watched him, its mouth gaping in silent laughter.
His own mouth opened in a scream. The hands of his stepfather, talons, cut into his arms, forcing him down. The face closed with him, as if to merge with his own. The stench overwhelmed him.
No, it was not a bad smell, but a tantalizingly familiar odor, spices tickling his nostrils. Cool hands touched his face and he grasped them, pulling himself from the nightmare. His scream, he realized, had been only a sickly whimper in his throat.
Bellasteros blinked stupidly around him. The sullen glow of a brazier illuminated his tent, the hangings of his bed, and his armor laid ready at its foot. Theara cradled his head, stroking the perspiration from his face with a cool cloth. He tried to speak, could not, cleared his throat, and muttered, “I thought I dismissed you.”
Her eyes, smudged with kohl and sleep, did not waver from his. “I stayed. I
thought you might have need of me.”
As a nursemaid, to wake a child from a bad dream? He was no man, it seemed; she had already discovered that, earlier that night. The first woman he had attempted since his return from Sabazel, and his skill even in that had been taken from him. If I cannot have Danica, I shall have no one … “I told you,” he snapped, finding his voice. “I have need of no one.”
She calmly continued stroking his face and he wrenched himself away. “But I shall overlook your disobedience this time,” he added lamely. No stomach even to punish a painted whore, it seemed. But then, it was unbecoming in a king to punish others for his own folly.
“My lord,” she said, her voice as soft as the cooing of a dove, “your duties trouble you. Such happens to every man, and is nothing shameful. I have failed to ease your mind in the one way, so let me try another. Let me sing to you.”
My duties, yes, he thought. They troubled him more than anyone could know. His army’s brave march through the Empire had become an awkward scramble from fortified position to fortified position. His Sardian troops were allowing themselves open mutters of discontent, and they suffered for it at Mardoc’s hand. His imperial followers grew lax in their obeisances to his divinity, and a troubled Patros set only a halfhearted example. But why, Bellasteros asked himself with a curl of his lip, should they have any more reason to think him divine? The satrap Bogazkar laughed at him. Conqueror, indeed.
Mardoc would say that Bellasteros had been unmanned by the Sabazian witch Danica…. Danica. Her name was an open wound.
“My lord,” Theara murmured. “Let me sing for you.” She slipped off the bed and padded in alluring dishabille across the tent. He realized he had liked her hands on his neck and shoulders, but he would not call her back.
She picked up a lyre and tested its strings with one flowing trill. Harus, the wind through Danica’s garden … Ashtar.
And he had quarreled with Patros, responding with ridicule when his friend had asked to return to Sabazel for the autumn rites. He hurt everyone he touched, it seemed.
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