Shadowdance

by Robin W Bailey

  Inside the gate, slender white pillars that once had lined a pebbled walkway lay broken and overturned. Black cracks in the sides of the gracefully fluted stone showed like gaping old wounds in the moonlight. In the center of the yard, a fountain was also overturned and shattered. The lawn, no doubt carefully tended at one time, had become wild with weeds and high grass. Sticking out of the thatched tangle, though, were pieces of weather-spoiled furniture too heavy for thieves to carry.

  Innowen felt like an intruder as he rode across the grounds, though the place was clearly abandoned. He watched the top of the wall and the roofs; his gaze rapidly scanned every shadow, every dark nook and cranny. He should have brought a torch, he told himself. Yet, somehow, this didn't feel like a place where light would be tolerated. It was a temple to darkness and mystery, and the Witch had been its priestess.

  And now, he had come, an adherent.

  Something shiny lying in the grass caught his attention, and he dismounted to see what it was. Only a bent and twisted copper mirror, whose handle had been snapped off. Time and corrosion had obliterated it's once-polished surface, but a tiny spot remained stubbornly bright enough to catch the moon when he turned it in his hand.

  He let it fall to the grass again. Carrying his reins in one hand, he walked toward the entrance of the main house. The pebbles on the walkway crunched conspicuously underfoot and under hoof. There was no reason to fear, he told himself.

  He tied the reins around the leg of a huge, broken marble table that someone had apparently dropped from the balcony of the upper level. Like Parendur, most of the estate was of two levels, the upper supported by rows of painted columns. Here, too, the main doors had been smashed inward.

  All within was darkness. He went only a few paces inside and breathed the air. It was dust and oppression. The toe of his foot stirred some unseen bit of debris, a fragment of crockery perhaps. He went no further, but stood there until his courage failed him. He retreated outside.

  The moon floated just above the wall, barely enough light by which to explore the grounds. As he moved around the eastern side of the house, a sudden movement and a dark shape startled him. He jumped back, one hand clutching at the hilt of his sword, before he recognized his shadow stretched upon the wall and staring back at him from an equally frightened posture. He drew a deep breath and moved on.

  He was not looking for anything. His original intent had been only to see where the Witch had lived. Now, there was a greater reason. Could it be that he had been born here? A child should have some memory of the place where it was born, but he had none. All he saw in his mind was a dark road, and that was no memory, he realized, only an image put there by his anger.

  He moved past several outbuildings whose walls had been caved in. The tall weeds scratched at his legs, but he ignored the irritation, examining each ruin as closely as he could without light.

  Behind the main house, he found another pathway. It, too, had once been colonnaded, but like the other path, its columns were now shattered chunks of stone. With a suddenness, he realized that no vandals had done this damage. It was too systematic, too thorough.

  This was Kyrin's work. No doubt, after chasing the Witch from her home that rainy night five years ago, the new king and his men had come here and shattered her gates, pillaged her estate, seized anything that pleased them, and destroyed the rest. The townspeople would never have done this. To hear Merit talk, they had loved the Witch, thought of her as a mother and a protector. Nor would common thieves have broken down the walls, as well as the doors, of the outbuildings. Mere vandals might have broken the fountain and some of the columns, but not every single one.

  No. Everywhere he looked now, Innowen saw Kyrin's handprint.

  His hands curled into fists. He had never hated a man as he hated Kyrin. Koryan's son, or not, he was no fit ruler for Ispor. The land deserved better. Mourn and Merit, Baktus and Rarus deserved better.

  But did they deserve the Witch in Kyrin's stead?

  There was no reason for him to waste any more time here. There were too many questions whose answers lay at Whisperstone, and no one would keep those answers from him any longer. He went back around to the front of the estate and stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at it. Moonlight edged its points and angles, making the darkness behind its splintered doors and broken shutters seem even darker.

  It was a temple, yes, he thought again, and if there had been anything to make a fire, he would have burned it all to the ground.

  As he gathered his horse's reins and started back down the walkway, the wind blew across the grounds, causing the weeds to shift and rustle. He thought he heard the laugh of a child, and turned around suddenly, remembering Merit's stories. But when the wind blew again, he knew where the laughter came from. It laughed at him, the wind, as it brushed across his face like the breath of old ghosts.

  Shut up, he told the wind, speaking to it, as he so often did, as if it knew his thoughts. He turned his back resolutely on the ruined estate and mounted his horse. I know the night is passing. But I will not dance here, not on this cursed ground.

  He rode through the gates. Halfway across the Kashoki river, he stopped and slid off his horse again, and washed himself quickly in the water, before he climbed out on the opposite side. It was more than the dirt of Shanalane he wanted to wash from his body, but that would not be as easy. Nor could water accomplish the task.

  Now he danced in the road, not to the wind, but to a music born of his own anger. It sang, rising from within, drowning out the rush of air and the shaking of the trees. Every line and angle and turn of his body described power, every gesture screamed.

  It was a dance that shouted defiance at the squat, black structure watching in silence on the far side of the river.

  Chapter 20

  Innowen had spent too much time at the Witch's estate to make it all the way to Whisperstone before the sun came up. The sky was turning indigo in the east when he came upon an abandoned farmhouse and decided to wait out the day there. He tied the horse to a spoke of a broken cart wheel, which lay against the front of the house near the door, took down his bundles and the water bota that Mourn had given him, and went inside.

  The house was a single bare room with a dirt floor. Not so much as a stool remained. Innowen set down his things and opened the crude shutters on the only two windows to let in the breeze. Then he leaned on the sill of the one facing east, and watched the colors of dawn spread across the sky. Just before the sun appeared over the distant horizon, he sank down with his back to the wall, put his sword across his lap, closed his eyes, and slept.

  When night fell again, he drank and washed his face with the last of his water and thought about the fitful snatches of dreams he still remembered from his sleep. He was hungry, but he hadn't thought to bring food from Mourn's tavern, so he took his bundles, mounted his horse, and left the farmhouse behind.

  The air was still hot, as if day were reluctant to release the earth, though darkness had come. The landscape was cragged with broken weeds and dead bushes and clumped patches of grass that sprouted sticklike from the cracked, gray soil. In every direction he looked, the land had the same texture as the skins of mummies he had seen in ancient Samyrabis.

  Why not? The land was dead. Ispor was dead.

  But what of Akkadi? What of the Witch's dream? Could she bring life to a dead land again?

  Such were the thoughts that troubled him all the way to Whisperstone. He barely noticed when the hills became plain, and the plain became forest. Before he quite realized where he was, he rode into the village that had grown outside Whisperstone's walls.

  It was early for him, but most of the villagers were already abed. This was just one more thing that set him apart from normal people, he reflected morosely. The ride had done that to him, caused him to look inward too deeply, to those places that were often better left alone.

  Sometimes, when he passed a door, he heard voices. He paused in the road to listen, and rode
on, feeling cold despite the heat. What might it have been like, he wondered, to never have met the Witch or Minarik, to never have left that cottage where he and Drushen had lived? What happiness might he have found in that simple life, the lives these villagers lived?

  He bit his lip and made an ironic smirk. Drushen would be dead of snakebite, he reminded himself, and he would probably have starved to death. That would have been his simple life.

  Watchfires burned all along the top of Whisperstone's walls, and pacing sentries moving back and forth before the flames cast giant, distorted shadows on the ground below. Innowen stopped to watch those huge, strange shapes and the tiny little men above, of which they were part. He looked over his shoulder. The moon was not yet up. The moonlight would fight the fire. Which way would the shadows go then?

  He rode up to the gate.

  "Who's there?" a voice called down from atop the wall.

  "You know me," he answered. "I am Minarik's son."

  There was a scramble on the wall and some muffled shouting. A moment later, there came a scraping of wood as a great bar was drawn back and one gate opened inward wide enough to admit him. A soldier greeted him and held out a hand to grasp the horse's bridle while four other guards closed the gate again and returned to their posts.

  "Welcome home, Innocent."

  Innowen blinked, at first not recognizing the soldier who addressed him. Suddenly, he smiled. "Veydon!" he said. "I didn't recognize you under that helm." He threw a leg over the horse's head, slid to the ground, and embraced his friend. "You look well. Your wound...?"

  Veydon grinned and rolled his shoulder. "Healed enough to let me take a turn at watch," he said.

  "But the night watch?" Innowen raised an eyebrow. "You could have pulled better duty."

  Veydon clasped Innowen's arm warmly. "I knew it would be moonlight or the stars that lit your way home, Innowen. Not the sun. Rascal knew it, too. He saw you from the wall before I did. I think he sensed your coming."

  Innowen glanced around the grounds. Everywhere there were tents and camps, soldiers huddled around fires, stacks of lances and weapons, barrels and carts of supplies. And shadows. Shadows everywhere.

  "He's waiting for you," Veydon said.

  Innowen nodded, pushing aside the awful foreboding he felt. He kissed Veydon's cheek, then took his bundles from his horse and surrendered the reins. "Don't tell anyone I'm back until morning," he said. He slipped across the crowded grounds, up the marble steps, and entered the main hall.

  There was no one to take note of him as he made his way up to his rooms. He pushed the door inward quietly, closed it, and set his bundles down.

  Razkili stood naked before the window, framed in the glow of the watchfires, his back to Innowen, his arms and shoulders gleaming as he anointed himself with sweet-smelling persimmon oil from a tiny jug. His right hand, dripping the rare and precious substance, rubbed languorously from his left ear, along his neck and down his chest as he turned slowly to face Innowen.

  "Are you angry?" Innowen asked uncertainly.

  Razkili shook his head. "You've ridden a long way," he said quietly. "You must be tired. Let me rub you."

  Innowen took off his garments and his sandals and stretched out face down upon the bed. Freshly crushed mint leaves had been pressed between the sheets, and the scent rose through the thin fabric. He folded his arms and put his head down upon them to inhale the fragrance.

  Razkili brought over a small table upon which sat a pitcher of wine and a single kylix for drinking. He put there also the pot of persimmon oil when he had poured a measure of it into his palm.

  Neither of them spoke while Rascal worked the knots out of Innowen's neck and shoulders. Innowen closed his eyes and let the tension seep out of him, trying to keep at bay the images and memories of his journey and certain suspicions that lingered relentlessly at the edge of his consciousness. But the massage only seemed to bring them into sharper focus. When Razkili went to work on his lower back, a few tears leaked from the corners of Innowen's eyes, and when he moved down to his buttocks and thighs, Innowen began to tell everything that had happened.

  "There's one more thing you should know," Rascal said when Innowen reached the end of his story. "Kyrin wants your head."

  "Because of Riloosa," Innowen mumbled into the sheets. He raised up on his elbows suddenly and took a drink from the kylix. Then he held it up to Rascal's lips for him to drink, too. When Rascal took the vessel, Innowen swung his feet off the bed, rose, and went to stand by the window.

  The fires on the wall had a mesmerizing quality. He folded his arms across his bare chest, leaned against the sill, and stared. "Sometimes, I feel like a ghost," he said at last when Razkili came and stood close behind him and looked out into the night with him. "Insubstantial. I see things. I know things. But I'm part of nothing. I belong to nothing."

  Rascal wrapped his arms about Innowen and pressed their bodies together. "You're part of me," he said.

  Innowen swallowed and leaned his head back on Rascal's shoulder. "Your eyes are right beside mine," he whispered. "We look out the same window." He swallowed again. "But what do you see when you look on the face of night?"

  "You," he answered without pause. "I see you, whole and beautiful. I see all the places we've been together, and I remember the things we've done."

  Innowen gave a low chuckle. "My Rascal with the golden tongue," he said. "It was a mistake to leave you behind."

  Razkili squeezed him, lifted him from the floor and shook him. "There are no mistakes in life," he answered. "Just lessons. Make sure you learn from this one."

  "Ugh!" Innowen cried, struggling playfully. "Osiri philosophy at this hour!"

  "Still feel insubstantial?" Rascal said in his ear as he set him down again.

  Innowen grew quiet once more as he looked beyond the window at the watchfires, the tiny soldiers upon the wall, and the shadows they made. Whisperstone was full of shadows.

  "Sometimes," he repeated honestly, turning serious again. "As if I can't really touch anyone or anything."

  Rascal turned him around and kissed him. "I'll show you how to touch," he promised. "I will."

  * * *

  Veydon woke Innowen by gently shaking his shoulder. He'd brought a tray, with a platter of cold roast pork and bread and a mug of steaming barley broth. The sky beyond the window was bright blue, and Innowen guessed it was near noon. There was no sign of Rascal.

  Veydon helped Innowen sit up., propped a cushion between his back and the headboard, and balanced the platter on his lap. Innowen looked at the food, and his mouth watered. He was famished. It surprised him, though, when Veydon lifted a warm, wet cloth from the tray and began to wash Innowen's hands.

  "Are you my host, now?" Innowen teased.

  Veydon nodded. "My way of saying, 'welcome home.'"

  Innowen smiled and accepted Veydon's ministrations. "Have you seen Rascal?" he asked.

  Veydon pushed the mug of broth into Innowen's hands. "He got up early this morning," Veydon said, sitting down on the side of the bed. "There was something he had to do, but he'll be back before evening."

  "Be back?" Innowen said. "He's left Whisperstone?"

  "Eat!" Veydon ordered sternly. "Don't worry about Razkili. He's all right. On the other hand, Minarik knows you've returned, and he wants to see you." He gestured at the platter. "When you're finished with that, I'll help you dress and carry you down to the Great Hall."

  Innowen lifted a slice of pork to his lips, but his eyes took on a hard look. "No," he said abruptly. "Tell Minarik I'll receive him in the courtyard in the gazebo."

  Veydon frowned. "You'll receive him?"

  Innowen nodded and began to eat, ignoring the uneasy expression on Veydon's face. In no time at all, he finished the last scrap of meat and the last crust of bread. He drained the barley broth from the mug and wiped his lips.

  "Now," he said, handing the platter to Veydon, who set it on the table. "I want the finest cloth you can find for my kilt
wrap. If my father wants to see his son, then I'll come in a manner that befits my status." He leaned forward and grasped Veydon's arm intently, pulling him closer. "Find something for me, Veydon."

  Veydon's brows narrowed as he met Innowen's gaze.

  Then he pulled back a bit. "This isn't vanity, is it? I see a scheme in those eyes." He stared a moment more, then let go a sigh. "Well, let's do it properly, then." He stripped the covering sheet from Innowen and draped it over one arm while he moved the platter from the table. He spread the sheet over the table and turned back to Innowen. "First, I'll oil and scrape your skin. Then fresh oil for your hair. I don't know what's spinning around behind those eyes of yours, Innocent, but if you want to look like a prince, leave it to me." He rubbed his hands together and grinned mischievously. "Prince, hell. You'll look like the finest whore in Jeriko."

  Innowen folded his arms across his chest as Veydon lifted him from the bed and set him on the table. "When did you ever see a Jeriko whore?" he said in a teasing scoff. Innowen gripped the edges of the table to keep his balance.

  "Shut up," Veydon ordered, "and don't go away. I'll be right back."

  Before Innowen could point out how unlikely it was that he would go anywhere, Veydon was out the door. Innowen gripped the table tighter, leaned slowly forward and looked at his legs dangling in the air over the table's edge. There was nothing to do but wait for Veydon's return. Interestingly, though, that old feeling of helplessness, which he had known so often in this very room, no longer seemed to be with him, and that made him smile.

  As he sat there, he began to wonder what could have taken Rascal away from Whisperstone, but before he could give it much thought, Veydon came back with a pair of male attendants dressed in white kilts. They bore scrapers and oil pots and mirrors and perfumes and stacks of soft towels. "All right, let's get to work," Veydon said, pushing Innowen onto his back on the table. He was clearly enjoying himself. He clapped his hands, and the attendants moved to either side of Innowen, spreading their grooming utensils near Innowen's head. "I give you a crow," Veydon said to the pair. "Give me back a peacock."