Sabazel

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “He has little regard for his own people.”

  “Indeed. They come streaming to me, as if I could feed them … At least I do not enslave them.” He gestured toward the rolling hills before them; abandoned farmland, perhaps, for the traces of walls and terraces still lingered, outlined in sedge and thorn bushes. “I have never seen so many impoverished towns, ruined villages, desert farms, as along the Road. The Empire was dying before we ever broached its borders, overburdened by the dregs of Daimion’s dynasty. Why should it not be my turn?”

  “Why, indeed?” she replied. “But can you rule what you have conquered at such cost?”

  “Yes,” he said, with a quick sideways glance. “Yes, I can.”

  They walked on in silence, down the flank of a hill, up the opposite slope, over the crest and down again. The hills seemed to be mounting slowly toward a cloud-mottled horizon and the suggestion of a solitary steep-sided peak. They paused only once, for rest and a bit of food; by evening the peak stood out hard and dark against the turbulent sky. On its top was an upthrust spire of rock.

  The sun was swallowed by the western horizon, and murky winter’s dusk overtook them just as they gained the base of the peak. The wind grew stronger and colder, scouring the rolling lands behind them and dashing itself against the rocky slopes. They found a sheltered place to make camp, just where a weathered path started upward. In the last thin gleam of the sun they saw that the spire of rock was really a man-made tower.

  Danica gathered brush and Bellasteros lit a small fire. For a time they debated about whether the prominence at whose base they sat was a hill or a mountain. Finally Danica offered a vision of majestic Cylandra, and Bellasteros, a son of the Sar’s flood plain, had to admit that this peak was only a high hill.

  They stood guard in turn, and in turn slept on opposite sides of the glowing embers, each wrapped in well-learned reserve. And yet, Danica thought drowsily, when they were alone together that reserve softened into a kind of … comradeship. She would name it nothing else.

  The morning dawned damp and chill. Mist hugged the ground, like a cloud too heavy to grace the sky; the sun was a faint, watery luminescence on an immeasurably distant horizon, chasing the sliver of a dying moon. Danica and Bellasteros stood at the end of the path and gazed upward. Ancient olive trees climbed the mountain slopes between rocks that now, in the hazy light, seemed to bear traces of carving. Faces peered from the twisted roots; winter-withered vines concealed sprawled bodies. There was no breeze, no song of bird or insect, and the silence itself was a litany to the tumbled figures …

  Danica blinked. It was just an illusion, a trick of the sun, her own god-haunted mind. She set her shield on her arm; beside her Bellasteros loosened his sword in its sheath. “Shall we go?” he asked. They began the ascent.

  Beneath Danica’s feet the ground rang hollowly. Her shield was heavy, borne downward, reflecting no light from the hidden sky.

  Bellasteros’s voice almost made her start. He was looking around him, at the stones and the gnarled trees, beyond to the mist and smoke-wreathed folds of the deserted lands. “My scouts have ridden here,” he said, half to himself. “They would have seen this tower, certainly.”

  “Perhaps it hid itself from them,” offered Danica. “We draw the edge of the world close to us.”

  His eyes widened, darkening. “I would rather fight a pitched battle with Bogazkar, in the open, under the light of the sun I know …”

  “That, too, will come. Would you have the sword Solifrax in that battle?”

  “Yes,” he hissed. His lips tightened to a slit and he plodded on.

  Danica nodded. “It is receding as we approach. Some things cannot be confronted directly …” She led him off the path, through a thicket of brambles into the midst of the olives. Vines coiled about their feet; pebbles chased them with little puffs of dust. Through the silver-green of the olive leaves the silver sky diffused with blue.

  They clambered down the side of a narrow ravine, and the tower disappeared from view. Up the opposite side, Danica’s foot sought leverage on a rock and it turned beneath her. Bellasteros seized an overhanging branch with one hand, her arm with the other, and heaved her to safety. Her shield struck his cuirass; the clang shivered through the hillside and the ground seemed to shrug like a great beast stirred from sleep. They both looked cautiously around them, but the ensuing silence was heavier than before.

  He released her. “My thanks,” she said, flexing her arm, and he nodded politely.

  They burst from the underbrush, dry stalks of marigold and thyme, to find themselves on the crest of the hill. The tower was only a few paces away.

  “Harus!” Bellasteros exclaimed.

  The tower could well have been a natural spire of rock, so well did it blend with the hilltop. It was built of cyclopean masonry, great hewn stones weathered by centuries of wind and rain, settled solidly together and immovable. A patch of darkness at its base was a door.

  A tentative ray of sun struck through the clouds. The olives rustled. The doorway grew even darker.

  Danica hesitated. Yes, she had seen this in her dream. But this was not image but reality, solid, consuming …

  Bellasteros drew his sword and advanced on the shadows. “We must go in, I suppose,” he said from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes.” Danica sighed. She joined him in the doorway. The darkness was impenetrable, like a wall between this world and …

  “The underworld?” he asked. “The seat of the dead? Shall I take Solifrax from Daimion’s skeletal fingers?”

  “Say, rather, the otherworld. The passage to the tree of the gods.” She raised her shield, running it through the edge of the darkness so that shadow flowed over its edge. The deep, secret pulse beneath her own quickened at the touch; a shimmer lit her mind, starlight and moonlight gathered in the wide bronze basin below Cylandra’s shining snowfield. The memory tightened her thoughts, twisting them into a taut expulsive thrust like an all-consuming birth pang.

  The shield sparked, guttered, flared with light. The darkness fled tattered into the tower. Danica inhaled, stilling a sudden tremble of mind and body, and she smiled with pleasure. Well, this power could be most intriguing … “Shall I lead?”

  Bellasteros, his sword dangling unheeded by his side, stared at her. “And when did you truly become a witch?” he asked.

  “A favor of the goddess,” she told him, “that I may aid you.”

  He looked hastily around, as if Ashtar herself stood just behind him and had leaned forward to tap him on the shoulder. “Ah,” he said faintly and, with an elaborate shrug, “Yes. Lead on.”

  The interior of the tower was empty. A wooden staircase had once led upward but now lay in splintered heaps along the wall. Bats murmured uneasily in the high shadows, wings fluttering. Stone-carved steps led downward through a gaping hole in the flagged floor.

  They picked their way through debris and brush to the stair. A spray of dried asphodel clung to Danica’s foot and she kicked it away. Bellasteros probed the still, dank air with his sword, reminding Danica that she should draw her own. She did, and its curved edge flowed with phosphorescence.

  She held her shield over the stair, revealing warped, uncertain treads hollowed in the center as if by multitudes of feet. But now the dust lay thick on them, and they spiraled down, down into a well of darkness.

  With another inhalation Danica started to descend. Bellasteros moved just at her back, a warm presence stirring the chill air. The light of the glowing shield flickered along walls of rough-hewn stone that soon gave way to walls carved of living rock. And still the steps went on.

  The darkness sighed with a rumor of voices, faint and faraway cries and pleas. Strain her heightened senses as she might, Danica could make out no words. She began to see shapes moving in the blackness, wisps of form like the dim afterimages left behind one’s own eyes. Her eyes were dazzled by the light of the shield, she told herself.

  Bellasteros muttered something und
er his breath, a prayer or an imprecation, and she knew that the phantoms were real. Ancient memories, she thought; the fears and hates and loves of a thousand generations… . Her foot slipped on an exceptionally narrow step. She teetered for a long breathless moment over the brink of nothingness, held only by the light of her shield—the light was tangible, a quicksilver bubble lifting her upward. Once again Bellasteros seized her arm and pulled her back. She turned and saw his wide eyes, his clenched teeth glinting. “My thanks,” she murmured.

  “And you so surefooted,” commented Bellasteros. His voice croaked and he stopped to swallow. “You have become clumsy of late.”

  “Mm,” she responded, not trusting her own voice. She collected her wits and turned again to the stair.

  The steps ended at last on a breadth of scarred rock. Danica held the shield as high as she could, sweeping the light about her; there were no walls anywhere, no indication of a passage.

  Bellasteros paced back and forth at the boundaries of the star-gleam, making sallies into a blackness denser than the darkest cloud-ridden night. The voices, the dim shapes, followed him. “Shall I lead?” he asked at last, returning to her side, and he swallowed again, convulsively.

  He was frightened, she realized. He had been here in a nightmare, and the reality of it was more frightening than any number of imperial troops. Such fear might well make him foolhardy. “We shall go side by side,” she replied. “We shall go …”

  She closed her eyes; the darkness, the drifting phantoms, looked just the same behind her lids. She cast her thought into the depths of the caverns, into the depths of her dream, slipping through the blackness like one ghost among many. The constant murmur of voices seemed for just a moment to take on meaning, like words in an old language seldom spoken, often sensed. A pinprick of light appeared in her mind, a distant flicker just beyond her grasp.

  And the dream ended at the mouth of a passage, a passage leading into more than one kind of darkness … Onward.

  She opened her eyes. Bellasteros was not watching her; his sword swished about him like the tail of a hunting cat. “Your new weapon is almost within your grasp,” she said. “This way.”

  And you are not frightened? she asked herself. She began the litany: If I cannot trust in Ashtar … They walked into the darkness.

  After a time walls materialized around them; they had indeed found a passageway. Danica heard more than one dry slither at her feet, and she clucked for the blind snakes as she did for those in Cylandra’s cavern. A faint, sickly light began to glow from somewhere ahead.

  Danica glanced at Bellasteros. His chin was up, his jaw set. His features were as sternly carved as those of some archaic statue. His eyes did not reflect the pale light but glinted with an internal fire. In a few strides he had gained the doorway of a large illuminated chamber, leaving Danica to follow.

  She followed. Before them was a cavern hewn from the rock of the mountain. The sides, the central pillars, swarmed with carved gargoyles, a twisting, tortured mass of sharp teeth, pointed wings, glaring eyes. Was that shape …? No, it was a trick of the light, surely, that made the forms in the corner of her eyes seem to be turning toward her, grimacing, reaching with talons extended.

  The floor of the chamber was slabs of dark, glistening rock, set as closely together as a reptile’s scales. There was dust here, yes—a thick acrid dust shaped around pieces of stained armor. Shaped like human hands grasping futilely at rusted blades; shaped like human faces peering eyelessly upward from crumpled helmets.

  Bellasteros stepped out into the room, walking warily toward a great flat rock at the far end. The greenish light that emanated from the walls, the ceiling, the forms of the gargoyles, wavered and gathered about him.

  “Ashtar,” Danica breathed. She sensed danger here, but it was a resonance of danger long past. The gibbering ghosts swooped at her back, urging her on. “Marcos,” she called softly, and the name echoed down the chamber. Again invisible wings fluttered in the shadows.

  He paused, waiting for her, his alert look focused not on her progress to his side but darting suspiciously to every corner of the room. Together they advanced to the rock—the altar, Danica realized. On it were the mortal remains of yet another warrior.

  The bones were brown and brittle, honeycombed by the withered egg cases of worms, unencumbered by any shreds of clothing or armor. The eye sockets of the skull were pools of nothingness. No memory, no identity; he had been laid naked on the slab, and naked he remained.

  “Who—” Bellasteros began, but Danica pointed to one hand. The finger bones, outspread like a scuttling spider’s legs, held a disk of silver emblazoned with a tiny, many pointed star—a miniature star-shield. The amulet alone of everything in the chamber remained untouched by decay.

  “Ashtar’s sign,” said Danica. The back of her neck shivered. “Mari gave to Daimion such an amulet to bind his faith; still he betrayed her and the gods as well. He paid with his death.”

  “Daimion?” Bellasteros’s voice ranged upward an octave. “Daimion, cursed, hounded from his kingship—and his guard could not save him from the sacrifice …” The pale light of the chamber swirled, palpable motes of putrescence, about his form. The gargoyles murmured among themselves, and the ghosts howled.

  Mother! Why threaten him, your own son! Danica lifted her shield. The pale shimmer, starlight and moonlight mingled, fell around Bellasteros like a cloak. The shimmer touched the ancient bones and, with the faintest, most distant sigh, they crumbled into an uneasily shifting dust. The amulet glinted, the star flashing out so brightly that shadows streamed confused into the farthest corners. Then it, too, dissolved. Silence fell on the chamber, the dust quieted, the voices stilled.

  Bellasteros closed his eyes. A quick shudder shook his body, a shudder echoed in Danica’s. “And will you,” he whispered, “give to me such an amulet, to call me to my death?”

  “Can you be bound by any other than your word, freely given?”

  His eyes opened; he turned to her, mouth tight, shoulders square, eyes opaque. “So I choose to be bound, then. As I told you, I shall not fail.”

  Ah, Marcos, she thought, as they walked side by side from the cold, quiet chamber. Daimion’s day is long gone, and I could not bind you even if I wished. Not even Ashtar could force you to her will; the circle of time carries us away from the ancient gods and their cruel strengths, and together we forge new allegiances…. She frowned. Her thoughts bewildered her, concepts flowing through her mind like water between her fingers, ungraspable.

  If Bellasteros’s thoughts were as difficult, he gave no sign; he strode in silence at her side. A faint scraping of scales against rock, wings in the darkness, and another faint luminescence touched the passageway.

  A chasm cut across the tunnel. Its sides were sheer, a knife slash in the rock, black obsidian reflecting the sullen red glow of fire. Bellasteros knelt on the edge of the crevasse, Danica leaning over his shoulder, and scanned the depths with narrow eyes. Tongues of flame licked upward from some great subterranean pit, shading rock and flesh alike with garish crimson.

  Danica exhaled through pursed lips, letting her breath caress the surface of the shield. She blew the golden gleam out like a lamp, and the shield, too, shone red. Her shoulder blades prickled; she looked around, her sword raised. Nothing, nothing but a creeping unease.

  Wordlessly they followed the passageway down the side of the chasm. A few steps away, around a buttress of rock, they saw a bridge. It, too, was of black obsidian, rising from a smoothly carved coil of rock, spanning the crevasse in one long arch, anchoring itself with another coil. Beneath it the flames danced, swirling upward in greedy leaps and spirals.

  Bellasteros started forward, placing one foot on the coiled step. Danica held him back. “No.” And, forcing calmness, “I am the guide. I shall lead.”

  His brows shot up his forehead. With a mocking bow he turned aside and stood with exaggerated patience, leaning on his sword.

  She stepped reluctan
tly onto the coil of rock, wondering why, indeed, she had not let him go first. The sole of her foot thrilled. She stepped onto the arch of the bridge. Her legs tautened like bowstrings. The heat of the fire hit her, a gust of searing wind, and she almost lost her balance. “Take care.” Bellasteros called. “I am not close enough to catch you.”

  Another cautious step, and another … It was not the hot breath of the chasm that pushed her. It was the bridge itself, shifting beneath her feet. Mother, what …? She fell to her knees, scrabbling desperately for purchase on the slick rock, her heart beating against her ribs … It was not rock. The anchoring step on the far side of the abyss uncoiled itself, and the great plumed head of a basilisk rose swaying into blood-tinted shadow.

  Bellasteros shouted something—just what, Danica could not tell. The eyes of the basilisk were glittering, incandescent gemstones, holding her own eyes fascinated. A fiery mist gathered about them …

  No! She grasped at the last trailing tendril of her thought, following it deep, deep; she cast it into her shield, threw the shield upward. Her body flamed hot with the effort and her face burned. The mist shot forward as fast and deadly as a spear thrust.

  The shield flared, turning and dissipating the mist into scintillants of quicksilver, and the silver sparks reflected them selves in the creature’s eyes. The gemstones shattered, dull lightless shards rained down onto the rock. The basilisk screamed. Its body lurched, throwing Danica onto her back. It heaved again, head coiling back over its body, and she was falling, falling into the fiery chasm …

  Mother, why give me such power only to let it end here? My will, my own will, to live or die—I almost fell on the stair, and the bubble of light sustained me …

  She clenched her teeth until her jaw ached, searching for the thought, shaping it, spinning it out. I must be strong, I must be … Her body was borne up like a feather on the wind floating in the warm blush of the fire. She twisted, falling back onto the basilisk’s body. Now! And her slender blade flashed scarlet. Scarlet from the light. Scarlet from the thick blood welling around it as she drove it to half its length through the smooth black scales.