“Ashtar,” Bellasteros said, his face creased with pain, “I have bowed to you, I have given myself to you, have we not had betrayal enough? Compromise, Mother; life for death.” He held Danica closely, his body cradling hers, his mind cradling her mind—strength, purpose, and power—her power, feeble tendrils of power coursing through her veins. Her bleeding slowed and stopped.
Ah, my daughter, my love for you is great; my son, my love, my child …
Danica summoned the last remnants of her power, gathered it, refined it, poured it through her body; the umbilical cord tautened, the baby drew breath, coughed, emitted a tiny wail. His skin flushed a rosy pink.
For a long moment no one spoke, no one moved; the presence of the goddess filled the room, swelling outward in the infant’s cry: “I am! I am!”
Then Chryse fell swooning into a nearby chair. Shandir, beaming despite the tears in her eyes, tied off the cord and cut it with a flourish. Ilanit turned to Patros, opening her arms to him; “Well,” he said, his voice squeaking uncontrollably, “such a mite to rule the world …”
Danica lay back against Bellasteros, weary, spent with effort; they watched in perfect unity as the baby’s chest rose and fell, as its eyes opened and stared up at them. Dark eyes, flickering with the smallest, most distant flame, reflecting the gleam of shield and sword and imperial diadem. Thank you, Mother, thank you.
“Andrion,” Bellasteros murmured, naming him. “Beloved of the gods. We shall see if he comes to deserve the surname Bellasteros …”
Andrion’s little fist waggled up into the air, thrashed about uncertainly, fell back. His face split into a yawn, obliterating nose and chin.
“In time,” whispered Danica. “In time.” She floated in some eddy of time and space; this, then, and nothing more…. Gently she turned Andrion’s face to her breast, guiding him; his hands grasped at her and his cheeks inflated as he sucked. The pleasure of it, the warm mouth drawing the last drops of power from her. She sighed and turned with a smile to Bellasteros.
He tried to smile in return, but his lips crumpled. Trembling, Bellasteros laid his face against Danica’s shoulder and wept.
The moon reached its zenith; the night wind swept away its path.
Chapter Eighteen
Danica cursed herself for her weakness. Her limbs wobbled like those of a newborn colt and the marble buckled beneath her feet. She fell against Chryse, and from her other side Shandir laughed at her. “Do not try to move so fast. It will take time to regain your strength.”
“Time.” said Danica, “is something that for once I have.”
Shandir eased her down in a chair by the window; Chryse opened the shutter a little farther. Thin winter sunlight lay on the city, picking subtle glints and gleams from battlement, building, courtyard. The mound of the temple precinct stood up on the right, the different shrines dozing in a midday torpor. To the left, from beyond the city walls, rose a thick plume of smoke.
Danica rested her forearms on the windowsill and sighed deeply. Atalia, laid in honor among her fallen comrades, and the emperor himself to light the pyre; may she go peacefully to her rest. Atalia, if only you could have seen my son …
But, Danica thought wryly, Atalia would have only glanced at the baby and turned to her queen demanding to know why she risked so much for its life—it is only a man-child, after all, and of little account in the scheme of things.
A breeze brushed her face and passed on into the room, stirring the shadows into opalescent glimmers. The hangings over the cradle fluttered in slow, fluid waves. But you. Mother, you know the significance of this child.
Yes; compromise, healing, and the end of the game.
Danica smiled. I was once a god, and the gods no longer awe me. She wondered for a moment if this was her loss or her gain. A tiny cry came from the cradle, and she abandoned her problem as insoluble. She started to rise.
“No, no,” said Shandir. “Sit.” But before she could reach the cradle Chryse did, picking up the wriggling bundle and rocking it in her arms. The woman’s face glowed with pleasure.
My loss, thought Danica, or my gain?
Chryse looked at her. “My thanks, my lady. My thanks for such a child.”
Gain, surely. Gain.
*
Bellasteros stood quietly, the heat of the pyre glowing on his face. Patros waited at his side, with Aveyron and the falcons, with Declan the high priest in attendance. Beyond the pyre, in a fallow field beside the road, was the mound of the dead Sardians. Facing it, the graves of the imperial soldiers. Bogazkar, Mardoc, Adrastes—decomposing slowly to dust, and as dust mingling with the ages.
The pyre of the Sabazians snapped and popped. The heat was too great; Bellasteros stepped back. He turned to the rank of Companions, Ilanit with her mother’s shield reflecting a red glare, Lyris, straight and confident, at her side. “My thanks,” he said quietly, “for your aid these past days.”
Ilanit lifted her chin, tossing her head in a proud gesture worthy of Danica herself. “We have bought Sabazel’s safety?”
“I have already issued the proclamation. The borders of Sabazel are inviolate.”
Ilanit nodded. “Then we are honored to serve with you.” She glanced from the corners of her eyes at Patros, and her mouth crumpled. “Honored indeed …”
The wind pealed down from heaven, gathering up the smoke of the pyre and spreading it across all the lands between Iksandarun and Sabazel, spreading it even to the streets of Sardis. And the fire consumed itself and went out.
*
Declan, wearing the winged pectoral and a becoming gravity, signaled the massed Sardian and imperial troops to silence. The echoing shouts of the centurions died away. “The blessing of almighty Harus upon this child,” he cried. “His spread wings protect this heir to the Empire. In the name of the god …”
Bellasteros, very carefully, held the tiny form of Andrion up to the army. The baby clenched its eyes, screwed up its face, shrieked. The glittering falcon standards seemed to shriek in reply, and the army shouted its approval.
Bellasteros lowered the child and tucked it into the crook of his arm. Here, feeling more secure, Andrion quieted. His eyes, bright little beads, gazed out wonderingly at the width of the world.
The army shouted again, saluting with a crash of swords against armor. Bellasteros lifted Solifrax in reply.
Andrion’s eyes fixed on the gleam of the sword, unblinking. “Not yet,” Bellasteros said quietly to him. “Not yet.”
Chryse and Danica sat side by side in a window, overlooking the ceremony. They turned to each other with indulgent smiles. “At least this Sardian ruler knows his father,” Danica said.
“Most people will think him mine,” returned Chryse. “The king was, after all, in Sardis in the spring. And these robes …” She patted her flat stomach with a chuckle. “Those who know the truth, Danica, will know its importance—Andrion, beloved of the gods …”
“And of his mothers,” Danica said.
*
The moon diminished, died, and then came again, a silver paring clinging to the sun’s path.
The wedding ceremony was held according to imperial custom, with several priests and priestesses in attendance, with bells ringing and tapers glowing, with jewels and silks and incense. Declan said a special blessing over Bellasteros’s bowed head and that of Roushangka beside him; then he turned to bless the Sardian officers, Patros and the others now wedded to the younger members of the imperial harem.
The festivities went on most of the night—singing, dancing, feasting. From her room Danica heard the lilting strains of the music, and she sang softly over Andrion’s dark head. For a time Ilanit pouted, envisioning Patros in another woman’s arms; soon, though, she heeded the soft Sabazian songs her mother murmured, and her expression smoothed.
Bellasteros was led to the door of Roushangka’s chamber by a group of imperial officers bearing torches and wine goblets. There they left him and with many ribald jests returned to the part
y. He had not drunk much—strange, how his taste for wine had decreased since one eventful evening in the gold pavilion—and he entered the room quietly, with a certain wry resignation.
A few oil lamps barely shifted the shadows. Somewhere, behind the hangings of the great bed, the child was waiting—the child he was expected to violate for the Empire. He made a mental note to halt the marriage of his own daughter until such time as she made her own choice.
There was Roushangka, draped in darkness, the coverlet held high in her two clenched hands. Her eyes were huge wells of fear—he imagined he could hear her teeth chattering. And why not? He came to her stained with the blood of her relatives—with the blood of his own mother …
He eased himself down beside her, talked to her of the world and the wondrous things it held, of the garden of the gods and the sword Solifrax wrapped by a serpent, of the moon rising over Cylandra. And slowly she let the covers fall from her face.
With one delicate fingertip he touched her cheeks, her lips, the hollow of her throat. She was scented with some rich fragrance, not at all like Danica—but then, her hair was blond … He stroked her body, lightly, until she smiled and opened her embrace to him.
The Empire secured, he rose and left her pink and tumbled, asleep. Roushangka, he thought, may you find some purpose to your life; I cannot be it. He dressed, picked up the diadem, sought Danica’s chamber.
She lay with Andrion tucked against her side, holding him with her arm as he nursed. “Ah,” she said drowsily. “Another bloody deed done for the Empire?”
“Unfair, Danica. Unfair.”
“Forgive me.” She sighed. “I would be surprised to see you here, but Patros has already come seeking Ilanit.”
“We know our minds.” Bellasteros smiled. He bent to touch one tiny hand splayed out against Danica’s breast. He could, he thought, pass the baby’s entire body through the diadem. “You are my lady. I would sleep with you on my marriage night.” He lay down behind her, enfolding her in arms.
“You are scented with an exotic fragrance,” Danica said, laughing. “Did they drench her with an aphrodisiac?”
“Probably. She is a child, after all, and it is a woman I love. I prefer the scent of asphodel.”
“And the queen of Sabazel, frail enough to love a man … My strength returns, Marcos; soon I must go back.”
The words pierced him, arrows in his mind. But they were not unexpected. “I know.” he said after a moment. He laid his face against her hair. “I shall come in the spring.”
“We shall be expecting you, the goddess and I.” She turned slightly and met his lips in a gentle kiss. Andrion continued feeding, oblivious.
*
The moon swelled again, passed its ripeness, and decreased. Danica did not count the days. She slept as much as the baby slept; she lay by his side in the noon sunlight and tickled his little waving feet. He grew, slowly but perceptibly, his wizened arms and legs filling out, his body becoming plump.
I, too, shall become plump, Danica chided herself; Bellasteros had ordered the palace cooks to tempt her appetite with succulent lamb basted in lemon juice, dates, pomegranates, delicate pastries flavored with honey and pistachios. She pulled herself from the bed, stretching and bending, and her body returned to its sleek firmness.
One day she was appalled to notice that the star-shield had gathered a veil of dust. Frowning, she cleaned it, drawing gentle sparks from its surface; it was dented and scarred with its many battles. It was time, she thought, to return it to the basin of light, to mend it. She thought of Sabazel, the mountain, the little town, the wind in her garden … For a moment she was dizzy with the memory of it.
The next day she dressed again in helmet and corselet, the mail flapping loosely over her waist. She lifted the shield into its accustomed place on her arm, drew her sword, thrust and parried across the floor.
Chryse stood at the window, absorbed in the vista of the city, in the quiet song of a hoopoe. She held Andrion on her shoulder and his dark eyes boggled at Danica as she exercised.
Laughing, she saluted him. With a purposeful grimace he lifted his head, held it upright for a slow count of five, then let it fall again. His nose hit Chryse’s collarbone and he howled indignantly.
Chryse shook herself from her reverie and soothed him. She saw Danica in her armor and her face struggled to find an appropriate expression. “It is time for me to go.” Danica said.
Chryse flushed. “Please do not think that I—”
“But he is to be your child. You have already found a nurse for him.”
“Yes, but—”
“And I should leave you with your husband. He is your husband, Chryse, not mine.”
Chryse flushed even more deeply. “He … looks at me in a new way. That I owe to you, my lady.”
“No, you owe it to your own efforts. Shandir told me how you saved me from Adrastes’s sorcery. I thank you, Chryse.”
“What else could I do?”
“You could have done nothing, as was expected of you.”
The door opened and Ilanit came cat-footed into the room. Indeed, Danica thought, the girl looked like a cat, preened and petted, her lengthening hair held back by a thin fillet. “And you?” she asked.
“Pardon?” Ilanit replied. “You are ready to return to Sabazel?”
“Ah,” said the girl with a sigh, “I had thought to die, leaving him—but I am Sabazian, after all; Ashtar calls me home, and …”
Danica drew Ilanit to her side. “And?”
“I think I am with child,” she said shyly.
Life after death, and compromise at the end … “Have you told him?”
“No. He will learn soon enough. But then, only one child of Ashtar has a father.” She stepped away from Danica to take her mite of a brother from Chryse. He stared up at her, and his face crumpled into a wide, toothless smile.
“Patros will not hear it from my lips,” Chryse assured Ilanit.
“My thanks,” returned the girl. “His new wife is much like you, lady.”
Danica flexed her sword again before her. The shield glimmered faintly, drawing a slow stirring of air through the window. And what if peace, she thought, is a greater danger to us than the enmity of our neighbors? Creeping contentment, and our guard lowered; a new game. Mother? Not all men learn as readily as Bellasteros.
Vigilance, my daughter; vigilance, now more than ever.
Then we shall be wary, Danica thought. And she tucked the thought away, to examine it at some later time, in some more suitable place within the borders of Sabazel.
She set down her weapons, removed her helmet, stripped off her corselet. “Bring me my son,” she said to Ilanit. “Already I ache with the thought of leaving him.” We give away our sons, to be cherished by our neighbors—cherished indeed, she told herself. Loved by the gods, as is his father, as is the woman who bore him but who could not be his mother …
She took the warm, wiggling little bundle and clasped it to her. Andrion rooted at her breast, then looked up, cooing and smiling. His eyes, the eyes of the king, dark and rich … He began to suck.
Tears clogged her throat and she swallowed them. Vigilance, she thought. And she thought, It is not Ashtar who is implacable. It is I.
*
Declan bowed in respect. “I am pleased that you like it.”
Ashtar’s shrine had been scrubbed, painted, garlanded with vines and early spring flowers. “It is worthy of the goddess,” Danica told him. “My thanks.” She raised the shield toward the atrium and the cool morning sunshine; a quick swirl of light emanated from the emblazoned star. Moonlight, drawing her home to Sabazel.
Light reflected in Declan’s pectoral. “The honor of the god restored,” he murmured, and she nodded agreement. Hard, to take leave of even this priest…. She bowed before the shrine of Harus and walked out of the temple precinct.
Bellasteros waited by a small troop of horsemen. His hair was beginning to wave over the back of his neck and across his
brow, a gleaming sable bed for the diadem; his cheeks and chin were shaded by a soft beard in the fashion of the Empire. It becomes you, she thought, but she could say nothing.
Shandir spoke with the centurion Aveyron. “… welcome in the spring.” Ilanit stood somberly by a somber Patros, their farewells made. At a high window Chryse held sleeping Andrion, her unveiled face damp with the tears no one else would shed.
Danica’s breasts tingled and a warm trickle of milk wetted her shirt. A small discomfort, she assured herself. Just as the look in Bellasteros’s eyes was only a small discomfort. Too much to say. Too much that could never be said.
Silently she mounted her horse and led the depleted group of Sabazians, seventy strong, out of the city. Lyris turned and waved to Chryse; the gold chain glinted at her throat, and she wore it as a badge of honor. But Danica would not look back.
Sabazel, sighed the goddess. Sabazel secured, my daughter.
A game that cannot be won, Danica replied. But she had thought that so many times that it had at last lost its power to wound her.
Bellasteros and Patros, a ceremonial guard, and a falcon standard rode with them to the pass. Peasants tilled the fields beside the road and built farmsteads of mud-brick and brush. Soldiers worked rebuilding the walls and the forts. “And who would attack you?” Danica asked the emperor as they rode ahead of the rest.
“Vigilance,” Bellasteros returned. They looked at each other, looked away quickly. “Danica,” he murmured, and a purling wind plucked the name from his lips and bore it away. “Danica, have we come full circle, back to where we began?”
“No. We began as enemies, clinging to the narrowness of our sight. Now …”
“Now?” He turned to her again, letting the full force of his gaze rest on her.
Her arm moved to raise the shield against that look, but she forced it down again. “We know that the world has no edge, no ending … Come to me in the spring, Marcos, and we shall celebrate the rites of Ashtar, together in joy—” Her voice broke and she turned her horse, turned away from the dark eyes and the distant flame they held. Ilanit extended her hand; Patros reached out, touched it. And they, too, parted. The Sabazians saluted the falcon standard before they moved alone down the pass and across the rolling lands. At the stream they paused. Danica allowed herself one deliberate backward look.
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