Shadowdance

by Robin W Bailey

  Despite himself, he softened somewhat toward her, and he whispered.

  "A thousand times I heard you singing in the wind.

  Every night when the sun went down and the breezes came,

  I listened, and you called my name

  While the moon laughed and the owls grinned."

  He licked his lips and swallowed again. More than just his legs, she had given him a dream and a purpose. Now it all lay shattered.

  Her smile widened before her chin settled to her chest again. "You make nice verse for a spirit," she said in a soft whisper. "Did you know that Koryan killed my mother a few years later?" She raised a blood-covered hand and moved it through the air as if there were something invisible there, which only she could see and touch. "I never knew her face; I was only a newborn, after all." Her expression changed suddenly, turning hard, cruel. "But I can see it sometimes, the deed, the murder, like the struggle of two shadows in a room full of darkness, and I hear her gasps. I feel her die."

  Innowen watched as her hands explored the outline of some memory, and as her fingers closed around something and tensed and began to choke. Her face contorted, taking on the expressions of both victim and murderer, flickering between rage and terror.

  It was appalling to witness, yet Innowen could not turn away. "Did you kill Koryan for revenge?" he dared to ask in the barest whisper.

  The Witch's face recomposed itself. Her arms froze in midair, then sank down and hung limply in her lap. "No," she answered in a childlike voice. "Little brother did that. Kyrin killed him. He discovered who I was and came to visit me in the dark of the night at Shanalane. That old nurse never let me forget who my parents were, you see. I'm not sure how Kyrin found me out, but I think it was the ruby."

  "The ruby?" Innowen whispered, remembering her sword, which was in the bundle on his back.

  The Witch nodded slowly. "The Wendur Ruby. My mother sent it with my nurse to give to me when I grew old enough. In my vanity, I wore it when I returned to Ispor. I think someone must have recognized it after so many years, and they took the news to Kyrin." She looked aside, toward the lamps, toward the basket of snowfever petals.

  "But it's no matter," she continued. "I have driven Kyrin out and taken the throne that is rightfully mine. All things change, is that not so, Spirit of Dreams? No woman has ever ruled Ispor. But a woman rules now in Akkadi. I've built an army. Soon, I will build an empire."

  Her eyes flickered and closed, and her head sank forward again. She sat there in her blood-dyed bed like a doll that someone had propped up and abandoned.

  Innowen stared at her as he shifted the burden on his shoulders. "Some dreams are nightmares, Minowee."

  She didn't look up, nor did she open her eyes. "That is true, my Innocent," she whispered. "You dreamed of dancing, once, and I told you, 'Dance, dance away the world.' Do you remember?"

  Innowen backed slowly out of the lamplight and toward the darkness of the balcony. He could bear to stay no longer. "How could I remember?" he murmured. "Innowen is not here. I am a spirit, a spirit of dreams, flown in though your window, flown out again."

  She wrapped both arms about herself and reclined gracefully back on the stained bed. Her lips moved ever so slightly, and her words floated in the air.

  "Begone, then, spirit—dissolve away!

  Upon this ruddy pillow I am pressed,

  With bloody work to plan—no time for rest.

  And schemes to dream before the light of day."

  Innowen made no response. The time for games was over. He slipped out onto the balcony and filled his lungs with the clean, fresh air of night. He leaned on the rail and, for a brief moment, thought he might be sick. He gazed up at the sky; the stars shone like cold dagger points.

  From within the bedchamber came the faint sound of weeping, and he knew it was Minowee. He bit his lip. How easily she seemed to slip from one role into another—benefactress, murderess, conqueror, lost child. She was the Witch of Shanalane to all who knew her. But alone in her bed, when night's heart beat slowly, she was only Minowee.

  He turned her name over and over in his mind. Her name, just one of the secrets he had learned tonight. Minowee. It sounded to him like little minnow, and in another time and place, he might have given her that nickname.

  But it wasn't another time or place. It was Ispor, and he should have taken her dagger from the floor by the bed where she'd dropped it and cut her throat while she dreamed. That would have been best for everyone. Yet even as he conceived of such a deed; he knew he could never have done it.

  For all that she was, all the cruelty she had done, she still had lifted him out of the mud. Because of her, he walked. Where would he be now if she had not stopped on that road in the forest? What would he be?

  He began to move along the balcony, letting distance muffle the sound of her tears, paying little attention to the windows and doorways he passed. None were lighted at this late hour. He went as quickly as he could, finally breaking into a run, wanting desperately to be away from that place.

  There was no stairway down from the upper balcony to the courtyard. When he had made his way around to a point almost opposite the Witch's bedchamber, he stopped. The logical thing to do would be to go back inside and make his way out, either through the courtyard or another egress. He couldn't bring himself to do that. The palace was hers now. It smelled of her; it smelled of incarnadined sheets and snowfever petals. The very essence of her wafted in the corridors.

  Instead, he threw one leg over the rail, then the other. On the very edge of the balcony, clinging with only his injured hand, he cast a glance toward the pair of guards at the garden entrance. Carefully, he bent down as low as he could and dangled the cloak-wrapped bundle he carried in his other hand. It might make some noise when he dropped it, but he would risk it. He wouldn't go back inside.

  He scanned the ground below. The gloom was thick, but he spied a bush that still had a few leaves and dropped his bundle upon it. It made only a slight sound. At the far end of the garden, the guards appeared too occupied with their conversation to notice. Innowen let go of the rail and dropped. The soft thud of his landing was too small to carry.

  Now he faced another problem. Recovering his burden, he crouched behind the bush and observed the two sentries. They were the same ones he had tricked to win entrance. He would need a new deception to get past them again. He might even have to kill them, though he didn't like that idea. In that case, he would have to get close enough to do it quickly before they could raise an alarm.

  Abruptly, a plan took form in his thoughts.

  Undoing the bundle, he spread the Witch's armor out before him. Then he unfastened his own black cloak and set it aside. He picked up the breastplate. The cool touch of it against his skin sent a shiver through him. It was small. It would never do for him in combat, but by loosening its straps, he could wear it. Next, he fastened her greaves over the straps of his sandals. He had to bend and widen the curve of her gold arm bracers to fit them over his larger forearms. When that was done, he cast the Witch's white cloak around his shoulders.

  That left only her helmet. He held his breath as he lifted it to his head, fearing it wouldn't fit, and indeed, it barely did so. He opened and closed the wing-shaped cheek pieces, testing the range of his vision. Fortunately, he had shaved at Baktus' inn and had no beard to give him away.

  Lastly, he strapped on her sword, then gathered his four dolls and rolled them securely in the black cloak. With a quiet sigh, he stood, still safe behind the bush. His new bundle, much smaller now, he concealed within the folds of the Witch's cloak, which he wrapped about himself and held closed with his injured hand. In his good hand, also kept within the folds, he cancel his own short sword, bared and ready for use.

  He felt foolish. Sweat began to run down his face inside the close-fitting helm. He had no idea how he looked, if his disguise was any good. He might not get close enough to use his sword before the guards raised an alarm. He checked himself again
to see what improvements he could make, and adjusted the Witch's sword to expose the hilt with its ruby pommel stone.

  He took a moment to still a quivering in his limbs and tried to think, instead, of how the Witch would walk, how she would sound if she gave an order, though, of course, if Innowen had to speak, his deeper voice would give him away immediately. At last, he stepped away from the bush onto one of the white-pebbled walkways and strode boldly toward the garden gate.

  The sentries heard his tread on the loose stones, stared in his direction, and snapped to attention at once. Innowen waited as he neared them, his grip tightening on his sword, the echo of his breathing inside the too-small helmet loud in his ears.

  He watched their faces from behind the masking cheek pieces. He was almost to the gate. They stared not at him, but past him. He went straight up to the guards. Do it now, a weak voice screamed inside his head. Two quick thrusts before they have time to react. Then he was past them, past the shadowed columns and the flickering stone bowls of oil-fed flame, and down the narrow road from the palace without ever lifting his sword.

  At the bottom of the hill, the lone Dardan guard proved no more of a problem. The man paled a little as he recognized the figure walking toward him, then bowed his body almost level to the ground and said nothing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for the Witch to be wandering abroad this time of night.

  Well, Innowen reasoned, perhaps they thought it was. She was abathakati in the eyes of these men, a night-creature, touched by magic.

  He walked a maze of streets, putting distance between himself and the Witch, working his way toward the main gate. He had to get out of Parendur, even if it meant crawling across the plain when the sun came up. If he was here when she awoke, he knew in the core of his soul that she would somehow find him.

  He glanced up at the sky again, over the rooftops and towers, and wondered at the hour. A disconcerting sense of timelessness filled him. Where was the moon? The night seemed both too long and too short, nor could he correct that sense by observing the stars. They moved tonight in unfamiliar orbits, he was sure, and lied to him with their motions.

  How long before the sunrise?

  The clip-clop sound of a horse's hooves, muffled by soft road-dust, alerted him too late. A single rider turned the corner and reined up sharply. "My Lady!" the rider, one of the Witch's soldiers, exclaimed fearfully before bowing his head. Keeping his eyes averted, he said, "I apologize, but I didn't see you. The hour is late. May I escort you somewhere?"

  Innowen stood in the middle of the road, his thoughts racing. The soldier had addressed him directly. There was nothing to do but play out his role. He kept his voice to a soft whisper, barely loud enough to be heard. "Give me your horse," he ordered sternly. He stepped close enough to strike at once with his sword if the man wasn't fooled.

  "My horse?" The soldier answered hesitantly.

  "Give me your horse!" Innowen hissed angrily, as he imagined the Witch would do to any who made her repeat a command.

  Meekly, the soldier slid to the ground and handed over the reins of his mount. Innowen quickly shifted his sword into the hand that also held the bundle, wincing at the additional strain on his wounded palm. With his good hand, he reached out and accepted the reins. "Now go," he ordered curtly. "Leave me!"

  The soldier walked on up the street, scratching his head, but not daring to look back. Innowen waited until the man was out of sight before grabbing a handful of the horse's mane and swinging up astride the beast. He balanced the bundle between his legs near the horse's withers and shoved his blade through his belt so that it rested near the small of his back. Adjusting the white cloak neatly about his shoulders again so that its folds concealed as much of him as possible, he rode forward.

  A contingent of guards stood watch at the main gate, but Innowen felt sure of himself now. He didn't hesitate, but rode into the light of their lamps and torches, straight up to the gate itself. The ponderous doors were shut, as he'd known they would be.

  The captain of the guard came forward. Surreptitiously, Innowen pushed the ruby-pommeled hilt of the Witch's sword into plainer view. "Lady," the captain said, bowing, then kneeling in the dust.

  "Out," was all that Innowen said.

  The captain rose quickly and gave orders to his men. Moments later, the great oaken bar slid back, and one of the doors opened just wide enough for a single rider. Innowen nudged his mount forward.

  "My men on the wall will see you coming if you return before sunrise," the captain said, walking beside him as far as the gap. As Innowen passed through, the captain called after him. "Be careful, Lady. It is dangerous country for a woman alone."

  Innowen's grip tightened around the reins, but he kept the horse to a walk until he was out of eyesight of the guards. Then he drummed his heels against the animal's flanks and ran as fast as he dared, turning off the road that crossed Parendur Plain, and racing toward the looming blackness of the Akrotir Mountains.

  Without the city's rooftops to conceal it, the moon hung bright above his shoulder and cast his shadow out over the earth. Its black, distorted shape raced ahead of him over the coarse ground, matching every fluid movement of horse and rider with a subtle grace, as only a shadow could. Innowen bent low over his horse's neck and clutched the bundle between his legs with the injured hand while his other worked the reins.

  It was a fool's chase, to run after a shadow, but still he tried desperately to catch himself.

  Chapter 18

  The morning sun beat with fierce intensity on Innowen's bare back and shoulders as he rode carefully up a shallow incline. The life had long since gone out of his legs. He kept his balance on the horse purely with his hands, bracing himself on the beast's withers, while the reins dangled loosely between his fingers. It made for precarious riding, so he went slowly, keeping to a northward course, and let the horse pick its way.

  Just before dawn, he had paused long enough to make equal bundles of the two cloaks, distributing the weight of the Witch's armor and his four dolls between them. Then he'd bound them together, making a big, clumsy knot, and tossed them over the horse's shoulders, where they jostled now against his unfeeling knees.

  On his left, the jagged peaks of the Akrotir Mountains rose in sharp relief against the blue sky. He had never thought of the mountains as ominous before, but now, stripped by the long drought of the greenery that normally covered their slopes, the bare gray stone depressed him. A subtle mist clung to the highest points, not yet dissipated by the swelling heat. Some breeze that played among the peaks stirred and churned those wisps and sent pale streamers drifting outward to diffuse into nothingness.

  A pair of birds flew overhead, their calls loud in the crisp air as they spiraled and looped and chased one another. Innowen almost unbalanced himself as he twisted his head around to observe their mating flight.

  With a gasp, he caught a double handful of the horse's mane in his right hand and managed to redistribute his weight.

  He knew he should find a place to dismount, a safe place where he could sleep the day away. If the horse misstepped, or if he grew careless again and fell off, he wouldn't be able to get back up. For that matter, he thought with a frown, the only way he was going to get down when he did find such a place was to let go and fall.

  He looked at the ground and bit his lip. The earth was hard and rocky, as gray as the mountains, with only a few tufts of spiky weeds poking up here and there to remind him mockingly of what grass had once looked like. He decided to push ahead. He would find a better place, if he just didn't fall.

  His head still swam with images from the night before. The Witch's murder of the drugged soldier, the bloody lovemaking with her son, a snowfever petal clinging to her lip, a pink tongue gathering and drawing it into her mouth; these visions played over and over again in his mind.

  There were other visions, too. Parendur at night, transformed into a kind of black, silent hell. The old man beaten to death in the street outside
his home, and Innowen's killing of two of the attackers. He didn't like killing, and yet he had done that so easily.

  Over it all lingered one other image, of himself, seen without benefit of a mirror, as only his mind could conjure it, in the Witch's armor, moving like a ghost through a sleeping city, among men who dared not look at him.

  Minowee. He whispered the name in his mind, though he dared not speak it aloud, even so far from Parendur, for fear she might somehow hear. Minowee, he thought again, remembering how she had come to him out of the storm on a forest road long ago, remembering her as she had addressed him last night, covered in crimson, deep in the feverdream. He strove with all his understanding to reconcile the images.

  The wind blew down from the peaks and rumpled his hair, brushed over his throat, teased his nipples to tiny erections. The sound it made as it whistled down out of the gray, lonely peaks was the sound of her name, Minoweeeee.

  "No!" Innowen shouted in sudden defiance, waving a hand before his face as if he might bat the wind away. "You won't possess me! I'm free of you now!"

  He gripped the horse's mane tightly in both hands, tangling the reins in his fingers, and nudged the beast to a faster pace. He soon slowed again. With no feeling below his waist, he had no sense of a rider's rhythm, and the bouncing promised to unseat him no matter how he held on with his hands. He licked his lips and felt his breath quicken. An old sense of helplessness threatened him once more.

  He rode carefully down one slope and up the next. At its summit, he paused. In the distance, a brown ribbon wound among the hills, all that remained of the Kashoki River, which originated at a point further ahead in the Akrotir foothills and flowed outward across the plains toward the heart of Ispor to join with the River Semene. In normal times, the Kashoki was a great and swift-running river. Now, there was very little water at all between its muddy banks.