Shadowdance

by Robin W Bailey

Innowen remembered the sweet odor he had experienced when the slave had passed him. He had not recalled it immediately, but he knew it now by its smell and by its effect.

  The flower was called snowfever. Some claimed it was medicine, and some claimed it was magic. Some claimed it was a gift from the gods, and some a pretty trap set by Bastit, the Lord of Chaos, to snare the unwary. Whatever it was, those who chewed its leaves or ate its petals dreamed such dreams that some chose never to wake again. Fever dreams, the users called them, dreams of flight, or of colors with taste, potent visions of the past or the future, of heaven or hell.

  Innowen watched as she lifted another handful. A few petals slipped between her fingers and wafted back into the basket. Like a child with candy, she ate them.

  Vashni went toward her. "Mother..."

  In his amazement, Innowen's trembling ceased. He had never guessed their relationship. Suddenly, he saw it written on their faces.

  The Witch glared. "I've told you not to call me that!" She moved past Vashni and set the basket on a table. When she turned toward him again, she held out a single petal and pressed it to his lips. "Eat," she commanded.

  Vashni towered over his mother, yet he obeyed meekly, nibbling the petal from her fingers as a horse eating sugar from its master's hand. As he fed, her other hand touched his thigh and worked its way up under his brief kilt. He closed his eyes and moaned as he swallowed the last of the petal.

  "You know what I want," she told him. She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him deeply, almost cruelly, while her other hand continued to explore under his kilt. Vashni moaned again and gathered her in his arms. He lifted her from the floor as if she weighed nothing.

  The Witch's legs wrapped around her son. Their kiss seemed to last forever as she worked at the straps of his armor. Finally, he put her down and finished disrobing himself while his mother watched impatiently. He reached out then, and with a wrench, ripped away her thin garment.

  The firelight gleamed on both of them as they moved together again. Vashni lifted her once more, and again she wrapped her legs about his massive body. This time, a sharp cry issued from her throat, and she flung back her head.

  The nails of Innowen's right hand shattered as he dug them into the stone wall at his back. He knew he should run while they were too occupied to see him. Yet he stayed and watched, fascinated, terrified, like a mouse watching the mating of cobras.

  "The bed!" the Witch ordered. Her hands gripped Vashni's hair as if it were a stallion's mane, and she jerked his head around to steer him where she wanted him to go. They didn't separate, nor cease their eager movements, but fell upon the sheets in a blind ardor.

  Up where the pillows should have been, the covering slipped back a little. From his hiding place, Innowen saw a pair of hands bound together with a rope that stretched to the edge of the mattress and under the bed.

  The Witch screamed commands and orders at her son and lover as they worked furiously together.

  Vashni's pantings and thrustings grew embarrassingly loud. Innowen felt a rush of shame as he realized how rapid and harsh his own breathing had become. He watched the Witch, though, and Vashni's gleaming, sweating body, and he watched that unmoving pair of hands above them.

  Then the Witch had a dagger in her hand. Innowen didn't see where she'd gotten it. Hidden among the bedclothes possibly. She simply had it. Through the haze of his passion, Vashni saw it, too.

  "No!" he muttered, thick-voiced. His thrustings ceased.

  The Witch dug the nails of her free hand into his bare backside. "Keep working!" she screamed. Using the same hand in which she held the dagger, she whisked away the covering at the top of the bed.

  A man lay there, bound hand and foot. His naked, hirsute form stirred not a whit, though, for all the violence and turmoil taking place on the bed. Scattered around him were a few of the white snowfever petals.

  Innowen didn't know the bearded face. But he knew the man dreamed a dream from which he would never awaken.

  "Not another soldier!" Vashni cried with angry desperation. "My men have served you well!"

  "He serves me better now!" the Witch answered savagely.

  Vashni ground his body down on his mother, as if he could punish her with his motions. "He doesn't deserve this!"

  The Witch didn't answer. Instead, she arched her back and twisted so that she could see the sleeping soldier and continue her rutting at the same time. Her legs locked around Vashni's hips, driving him deeper, preventing him from escaping her embrace.

  The dagger made a silver flash above the soldier's throat. A spray of blood fountained upward and splashed in Vashni's hair and on his back. More blood pumped outward. It ran down Vashni's neck, over his shoulders, into the Witch's face and over her breasts. Her body arched in ecstasy, her hands spasmed open, and the blade clattered to the floor beside the bed.

  "Minowee!" Vashni screamed, but whether in terror or in lust, Innowen couldn't tell. "Mother!"

  The Witch smeared blood with her hands wherever she could touch her son. His back shone black with it, and his buttocks, his sides. His hair dripped. It all ran down onto the Witch.

  "I need a man's blood, Vashni!" she cried suddenly. "A man's blood and fluid gives me strength, fills me with a man's courage and power!"

  They bucked wildly together while the sheets turned scarlet beneath them. "You already have Ispor!" Vashni grunted.

  "Akkadi!" she managed between ragged breaths. "It's not enough to have it. I must rule! I need a man's strength—a man's power—for that. A great Akkadian empire will be ours, Vashni, because I take what I need."

  Vashni's back arched, and his head rolled toward his straining shoulders. "When will it end?" he shouted through clenched teeth. "When will it end?"

  The Witch thrashed under him. "Now, let it end now!" She raked her nails down his spine. "Come to me, my favorite son. Come, and give me just a little of your strength, too!"

  Chapter 17

  Innowen cowered in the wardrobe's shadow. He shivered, afraid to move, though his legs ached painfully.

  Some time ago, Vashni had risen from the bed and recovered his things. Innowen had imagined he could hear the dried blood crack on the huge man's skin as Vashni had bent and lifted the dead soldier's body and slung it over one shoulder. Vashni had paused, looked at his sleeping mother with an expression of strange hurt, then taken another pale petal of snowfever from the basket and eaten it.

  The Witch of Shanalane slept. The sheets under her spent body gleamed moistly with red blood that sometimes, according to the whims of the flickering lamplight, seemed utterly black. So much blood! Innowen was sure if he could creep to the edge and press his smallest finger to the mattress, a crimson pool would seep up and form around the tip. Her body lay streaked with the stuff, her hair matted with it.

  He shut his eyes and stuffed a pair of fingers in his mouth as he tried to call up the image of her that he had so long clung to, the memory of her as he had first seen her astride a great horse on the road through the woods to Shandisti. But the image would not come. He knew it was lost forever. Once, he had thought her so beautiful, but he had been young then. No, not young, not really. Just naive.

  Well, he had finished his quest. He had found the Witch. He had even learned a few of her secrets. Now he would forget her, if he could, turn his back on this whole sorry business. Maybe he could talk Rascal into returning to Osirit for a while. He wanted nothing more than to be away from here, far away. Ispor or Akkadi, this land was no longer his home.

  Slowly, he stepped from the shadow. The Witch didn't stir. She lay there, like a bee at the center of a red, red rose. Or a wasp. Innowen walked to the foot of her bed and stared at her. I loved you, he whispered, but the words no longer had any meaning for him. What he had loved had never existed, except in his mind.

  A sudden flicker of light made him whirl toward the door, afraid he had been discovered. But it was only the draft teasing a lamp flame, nothing more.

  It wa
s then, as his eyes moved slowly around the room, that he noticed and remembered the darkened antechamber just beyond the bed. An overwhelming urge to know what waited there possessed him. It was wrong to yield to it, he knew. He should leave now, head for the balcony, out through the courtyard and escape this city and this woman forever. Yet even as he thought those thoughts, he found himself picking up one of the lamps and stealing toward the darkness.

  Under the lintel, he paused and lifted his light higher. His sudden intake of breath cracked the silence before he clapped his free hand to his mouth. It was only armor, standing on a rack, in the far corner. Her armor, he realized. It shimmered in the lampglow, blackened, light-weight metal, inlaid with wild traceries of gold and silver, from Mikonos, he was sure, by the workmanship.

  He moved closer to examine and admire it. He touched the breastplate delicately. It was small, made to conform to her body. There were her greaves, also, and arm bracers, and a helm beautiful beyond any he had seen, with hinged cheek-guards shaped like birds' wings to mask her eyes and face, and a crest of scarlet plumage. Around it all was thrown a white cloak, and over that hung a leather baldric, which supported a white-lacquered scabbard and a sword with a gleaming ruby pommel stone.

  He touched the pommel stone with the tip of one finger, tentatively, as if it might snap at him. The Witch had worn such a ruby around her throat once, on a chain.

  His gaze turned upward then, and he held the light still higher. Around the room, about head height, a narrow shelf ran. A chill shivered through him.

  There were his dolls, arranged carefully and neatly, the dolls he had collected in his five years of travels, the dolls he had carried with him in a bag across a dozen lands and brought to Parendur, only to forget and leave them behind when the army fled to Whisperstone.

  Long ago it seemed, he had thought there was magic in such dolls, as people in many lands believed. In Ispor, farmers stuffed dolls with grain and planted them in their gardens, leaving only the heads to show, believing this made the crops grow better. In Osirit, dolls stuffed with fruit seeds were sometimes hung from the branches of fruit trees in the belief this made the orchards bloom and the fruit taste sweeter. In distant Shaktar, men carved dolls from oak and offered them to the spirits of their vast forests. In faraway Samyrabis, the dusky-skinned?' nobility entombed their dead with hundreds of tiny, intricately carved dolls, believing these would come alive in the underworld and serve the noble's spirit.

  This fascination with dolls and magic, he had known from the first, had been inspired by the Witch's idol, that strange god-figure with its pelt of copper spikes. He had sought that idol as fervently as he had sought the Witch herself.

  Now he had found it, too.

  It stood now on a recently erected wooden pedestal, similar to those in the courtyard, against the antechamber's west wall. He let out a slow breath as he regarded it. Somehow, he had known from the moment he entered this room it would be here, waiting for him.

  It bristled with copper nails, some new and gleaming, others green and black with age. The scorches of countless prayer-fires marred and cracked the wooden skin between those nails. A piece of the shoulder seemed burned away entirely. Yet it still possessed a horrible, primitive beauty.

  Why, Innowen wondered silently, unable to voice the question he had so long waited to ask. Why me?

  The tricky lamplight flashed on the copper heads of the nails in its eyes.

  Innowen crept closer. No voice answered him, as he had half-expected. The idol was just an idol, no more than a lump of charred wood. He bent over it, peered at it. Then, taking a step back, he looked down at his own legs. Slowly, he slipped a hand up his left thigh.

  How? he wondered, regarding the idol again. Why?

  But the idol gave no sign, no answer, and Innowen felt a rage swell up inside him that he had never suspected. He grabbed the idol by the nails that protruded from the top of its head and jerked backward, intending to hurl it to the floor. It proved heavier than he would have guessed, though. It rocked on its base and settled forward again. Innowen grabbed it a second time. This time he'd use all his strength, and the abomination would tumble.

  Instead, he snatched his hand away with a small cry. A sharp pain blossomed in his palm. With a curse, he closed his fist around the wound, but that only intensified the pain. A fine trickle of blood ran out the bottom of his fist. Opening his hand, he brought his light close.

  Deep under the skin was a black splinter. But he hadn't even touched the wood, had he? Only the nails! He pressed the wound to his mouth, wincing, and licked at the crimson that showed so clearly in the lines of his palm as he backed away from the idol.

  The hurt had brought him to his senses. He retreated to the far end of the antechamber, taking his small light with him until the cursed thing on the pedestal was once more swallowed by the gloom. He felt it there, barely visible, as if it were somehow watching him. He couldn't be sure anymore of what was real and what was just his imagination. He only knew that he had to get out of this damned place.

  He cast a final glance at his dolls on the shelf around the antechamber, and a wave of sadness washed over him. He couldn't take all of them, but a few were special to him. Suddenly, he couldn't bear to leave those few in the Witch's possession.

  How to carry them, though?

  He saw the Witch's armor, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then, snatching off the white cloak, he spread it on the floor. Next, holding his light high, he searched the shelf for the four dolls he meant to take. He reached for the first one, then winced again as he bent his hand around the splinter in his palm. He had to get that out. But it would take a better light than this lamp, and he'd need a sharp knife. If he wasn't careful now, he'd only drive it deeper.

  He took down the four dolls and laid them in the center of the cloak. It was a big cloak, he noted, with ample folds, and there was plenty of room left when he gathered up the corners. For a moment, he thought of taking the rest of the dolls.

  A better idea occurred to him.

  Suddenly, he wanted the Witch to know that he'd been here. He could think of no better way of telling her than by stealing her armor. He set the lamp up on the shelf in the space where one of his dolls had been. Then he collected the various pieces, even her sword, and placed them on the white cloak.

  The lamp, he determined, could stay where it was on the shelf. With his good hand, he slung his burden over his shoulder and slunk back into the Witch's bedchamber.

  Just as he passed the foot of her grisly bed, with his thoughts on the fresh air and the warm breeze of the balcony, she sat up and peered at him.

  "Hello, spirit of dreams," she whispered thickly. The light from her candles and lamps sheened in her glazed eyes.

  Innowen glanced from the Witch to the basket of snowfever petals. He looked at her again and moved his head slowly from side to side. Her eyes didn't follow. They seemed focused on his chest. He lifted one arm and moved it across the spot where her gaze seemed fixed. She didn't react.

  She had called him a spirit—spirit of dreams. Well then, he would take his cue from that and gamble on the strength of the drug in her body. He answered softly, playing the same game with her he had played with the guard.

  "The land beyond sleep is sweetest of all—

  A thing is never what it seems,

  And men are merest dreams,

  Pale memories wrapped within a pall."

  The corners of her lips lifted in a tiny, delicate smile, a thing that seemed so out of place on her blood-smeared face. To Innowen's surprise, she answered him in verse, whispering, as her head rolled back a little, and her gaze locked with his.

  "Dreams are but an alphabet for the language of our lives.

  Those who strive and learn to read

  Find endless worlds of want and need

  That nightly shift and change and thrive."

  Her eyes made a languorous blink, and the pink tip of her tongue slipped out to moisten the corners of h
er mouth. "I want, and I need," she told him in a husky murmur. "I know you."

  A chill shivered up Innowen's spine. He was suddenly very aware of the bundle he carried. He forced himself to keep calm, to play the game. "Do you know me, Lady?" he answered quietly. "I am a shadow."

  "No," she told him. "You are a dream, my Innocent, a dream from long ago." Her smile faltered and faded, and a look of sadness took its place.

  "And I know you, Minowee." It was the first time he had dared to say her name, even in his mind, since Vashni had revealed it. She had been the Witch to him—the Witch of Shanalane. He repeated her name again, silently in his head, and pursed his lips. She would always be the Witch.

  "I made you to walk," she said. Her head rolled down until her chin rested on her chest.

  "You made me a vampire," he answered without bitterness. "I walk the night and sleep by day."

  She looked up at that, but still the glaze filled her eyes. She was deep in the feverdream. "Is it true?" she said with a kind of muffled wonderment. She shrugged. "My god was always a perverse god. Look what he has made of me!" Her head gimbaled back to rest between her shoulders. A tinkling little laugh escaped her stretched throat. "Queen of the land," she continued, "mistress of a country where women may not rule." Her head came up, and her gaze locked with his again.

  "I should have ruled from the beginning," she snapped suddenly. "I was Koryan's first-born. In many lands, the throne would have passed to me. But because I was a girl-child, my father ordered me exposed to the elements, left on a road to die from the night's cold or a wolf's teeth."

  Innowen swallowed. How similar her story was to his own, he thought. Had it not been for the blood that smeared her face, he might have found a measure of sympathy. Instead, he watched her carefully for any sign that the snowfever had lost its grip on her. When he spoke, he kept his voice low and soothing. "You didn't die, Minowee."

  "No, I didn't," she answered languidly. "My mother employed an old nurse to take me to Mikonos before Koryan's order could be carried out, and there in that island kingdom I was raised and taught things that would make your heart shrivel in your chest." Her smile returned. "1 see your heart, you know." She hesitated, peering at him with strange eyes that glittered briefly like the stars, as he remembered them. "I had almost forgotten you."