by Alison Baird
“If Khalazar really was a god,” she declared, folding her arms, “he’d love your people, wouldn’t he? Not draw them into a war, where many of them will die.”
The soldier stared back at her. “But Khalazar-Valdur is making us into a great and populous nation,” he argued, “and he offers us the world. For that we owe him payment, even our lives. Our priests say the Maurainians’ god must be very weak, for he has given his followers nothing.”
“Well, yours hasn’t given you the world yet, you know. You’ve still not won this war you’ve begun. Can’t you see you’re just his tools—his means of getting revenge on the world?”
“Revenge? I don’t know what you mean. Our god punishes the wicked and ungodly. He destroyed the Elei kingdom centuries ago, with fire from the sky.”
“And what harm had they ever done him, I’d like to know?” returned Lorelyn angrily.
“He is a god. Who are we mortals to question the gods? Valdur gives out life and bounty with one hand, death and destruction with the other. It is his right.”
“Well, where I come from ‘two-faced’ isn’t a compliment,” muttered Lorelyn.
Berengazi looked over at her and smiled. “You are all doomed, every one of you. The Avatar of Valdur will have his vengeance on you yet,” he declared.
Jomar, who was passing by, glared at him. “Quiet, you, or we’ll send you back home by installments.” Berengazi glowered, but said no more. Clearly he did not share his compatriot’s zeal for martyrdom.
“Has anyone seen Damion?” asked Jomar, glancing about.
“He’s gone to the ruin, to see Wakunga,” Lorelyn told him.
“Again? He seems to spend all his time with the shaman these days.”
“Why not? He wants to find out more about his Nemerei power—how to summon it at will, like the magi. He thinks he can be of more use to us as a mage than a fighter, and perhaps he’s right. He’s already learned to understand any language, like me.”
Jomar could not say why Damion’s new fascination with sorcery troubled him so. He knew well that his own reputation as the Zayim had grown in part because of his two wonderful golden-haired “angels.” Lorelyn in particular filled both the Moharas and the Zimbourans with awe—this curious, otherworldly being who was neither woman nor man, and could fight without even needing to use a weapon. But Damion intrigued them too. They imagined that, being divine, he must be imparting some heavenly wisdom to Wakunga, and little knew that the teaching was mainly in the opposite direction. Only Unguru and a few of his close friends remained skeptical. Unease filled Jomar, together with a sudden weariness of the role he himself played—weariness of the constant pretense and the burden of their expectations. For the first time he understood how Ailia must have felt when she faced the crowds of adoring Arainians.
He left the village and headed for the ruin, where he found the priest and the shaman sitting together under an ancient wall. Damion’s eyes were closed, his hands lying loose in his lap as Wakunga spoke softly in his ear.
“Damion! Damion, wake up!” called Jomar, striding up to the meditating priest and leaning over him. Damion’s eyelids fluttered open.
“You should not interrupt,” reproved Wakunga mildly as Damion rose, stretching stiffened muscles and groaning.
“What is he doing? What are you doing to him?” demanded Jomar.
“Helping him find his way. The path that is set out for him.”
“It’s all right, Jo,” put in Damion. “He really is helping me. I understand now what Lorelyn means when she speaks of having a Purpose. I didn’t come here to fight and kill, but to discover what that Purpose is.”
“Don’t talk like that, Damion,” said Jomar. “Just because these people think you’re an angel—”
Damion smiled at him. “Jo, it was you who told me to go along with this.”
“But that was only at the beginning, when our lives were in danger! And I didn’t tell you to go and believe in it yourself!”
The priest’s face turned serious. “Jo, I may not be an angel, but I do believe I’ve a power I can learn to use and—a mission of some kind. Something that I am meant to do.”
“You’re mad,” Jomar said. Damion made no reply. He continued to stare into space, his expression tranquil. The Mohara felt a stab of anxiety. Was it the battle shock again? Some soldiers appeared to recover from the illness, only to be stricken again when they attempted to return to daily life. Some died, not at once but by slow degrees, mind and body fading together. The same thing had happened in the slave camps, to people who had suffered until they could endure no more. They were beyond help as a mortally wounded person was beyond the aid of healers. He had watched them in anguish until he learned to armor himself against sorrow and look the other way. And he had sworn that he himself would never surrender in that pitiful way, but would die fighting when it came to be his turn. So it was that he had flung himself in mindless fury upon the lion that invaded his work camp, daring its terrible claws and fangs. For in his mind it had not been a lion at all, but King Zedekara, and the slave drivers, and the desert itself in all its inexorable cruelty. In later years his act seemed to him one of madness rather than courage. It had not been the lion’s fault that its hunting grounds and prey had been destroyed by men. Slaying it was like striking down the conscripts in Khalazar’s army: the true enemy was never the one you actually killed. And after you had bloodied your sword, this enemy seemed to mock you from its unassailable retreat—to jeer at your petty and futile victories.
Damion’s eyes were shut: he had retreated once more to that place where Jomar could not follow. The warrior shuddered as he turned away, and walked back to the village.
Lorelyn had retired to the lean-to of animal hide that had been set up for her, and he stood for a moment gazing at her as she lay on her bed of furs. She was asleep, giving to this activity the same single-minded concentration she gave to everything else: lying with limbs asprawl and body utterly relaxed, sleeping with all her might and main. He pondered her lean grace. At any moment, he felt, she would leap up and be instantly alert, like a tigress roused from slumber. But he sensed something beyond her physical strengths: a flawless purity like some rare crystal’s. Hers was a spirit incapable of any kind of duplicity or falsehood, on whom one could rely with absolute sureness, to trust with one’s life. An ideal comrade in arms who would be at one’s side in the battle charge and hold the line, never retreat and never fail in her duty, unless she was slain. She was well able to look out for herself, yet somehow he found himself wanting to protect her. Was that not in fact why he had been so opposed to her fighting, he suddenly wondered—because he could not bear to see her come to harm?
I love her, he thought in amazement. It was a bolt from the Ether—a revelation.
As he gazed at her she stirred, yawned, opened her eyes, and when she saw him she smiled. He suddenly yearned to tell her what he had been thinking about her, but the words would not come, and he thought in helpless self-reproach that he never had known how to translate thoughts to words. It was a skill that his warrior’s life had never required of him. Damion, now, would have known what to say. But he, Jomar, could only stand there awkwardly as the moment passed him by.
As Lorelyn looked up at Jomar she felt a warmth toward him, stronger than any she had known before. Despite their not-infrequent spats, there was something about him that was as firm and solid and reassuring as the ground beneath her feet. Such bonds, she knew, often formed between comrades-in-arms: those who faced danger together could not help but forge strong ties of heart and mind, overcoming any minor differences. She sat up and smiled again, and for an instant there seemed an answering warmth in his dark eyes, and he looked as though he was on the verge of speaking. But what he meant to say she never learned. A loud shout shattered the quiet evening, and the moment was lost.
“News! There is news!” Hoofbeats accompanied the cry.
Jomar swung around looking irritable. “What is it now?” he
snapped.
Kiran Jariss came riding into camp on the desert horse that they had given him. “What’s all the noise about?” asked Jomar again.
“News from the city,” Kiran gasped, scrambling down off the horse. “It is announced that, since no one can capture you, the God-king will slaughter people until you surrender.”
“How are they to die, Kiran?” demanded Lorelyn, springing to her feet. “Is it the temple again?”
“Not this time. They are to be given to one of the fire-breathing monsters that lair in the Valley of the Tombs. A sacrifice is to be offered each day. The first victim is a prisoner of noble blood—Marjana, daughter of the Shurka king whom Khalazar slew. She has been kept as a slave in the castle, but now she is to die.”
“No! We can’t allow this!” said Lorelyn. “When is she to die, Kiran?”
“At sunset today. At the Tomb of Zedekara.”
“Then we still have time to get up a raiding party.”
“I don’t like the sound of this at all,” said Jomar. “Why the Valley? It’s so far from the city. Why not the arena or the temple? It sounds like a trap to me: they’re baiting us, drawing us out.”
“Jo, we can’t let that girl die,” protested Damion, who, along with Wakunga, had been drawn to the village by the disturbance.
“Do not go,” said the shaman to Damion.
“My friends need me. And Khalazar—”
“You do not understand. This is nothing to do with Khalazar. It is the dragon-wizard who seeks you—you, in particular. If he captures you, it may bring ruin on us all—the daughter of the Morning Star included.”
Damion wavered. “I’m not that important, surely?”
“Everything is important. A flood begins with one drop, a sandstorm with one grain. You are like that, Damion: at this moment in time at least. Everything now depends on you. Go on this mission, and you walk the wrong path,” the old man warned. “You will lose your way. You must remain, and learn, not ride out with a weapon like any other man.”
“Perhaps Damion should stay behind,” suggested Lorelyn. “The rest of us can go.”
“Listen to her,” said the shaman to Damion. “She and the others go into danger, but for you it will be worse. It will be the ruin of another’s life.”
Reluctantly the priest acquiesced. “Take my sword, Lorelyn. The adamant blade is stronger than yours. I will remain here.”
Just as well, Jomar thought. If he is losing his mind, it’s better for him to stay here.
As the warriors readied their mounts and weapons, Damion came and watched their preparations with a wistful eye. “Be careful, won’t you?” he urged. “If Jo is right, and it is a trap . . .”
“We’ll be on our guard, don’t worry,” promised Lorelyn, fastening his sword at her side.
They had prepared every day for more raids, practicing sword-thrusts and parries, testing their bows and spears. As the sun dipped lower and the wind dropped they saddled and harnessed their horses and pulled on their armor. The Mohara women gathered, uttering the shrill ringing cries with which they traditionally sent their warriors off to battle. At last the small force set off across the wasteland, Damion watching anxiously.
“Good luck to you!” he called. And watched until they vanished into the darkening distance.
THE OXEN THAT DREW THE CART were pure white, the color of sacrifice. Lambs and doves and other white animals were slaughtered on holy days, and in olden times human sacrifices had once been led to the altar of Valdur garbed in white linen and mounted on white steeds. Marjana knew these things: while she dwelt still in her father’s house she had studied many books of travelers’ tales, curious about the ways and customs of foreign lands. So it was that, although no one told the reason for her unexpected journey, she knew well what it must mean as soon as they clad her in white and set flowers in her unbound hair. And the ox-team, with their white hides and garlanded horns, had confirmed her fear.
The cart, with its company of mounted guards, moved slowly through a wide dry wadi, occasionally halting as one of its wheels struck a large stone or one of the cracks that gaped in the ground like parched mouths. Presently the wadi dipped, then opened onto a broad valley, the bed of a river in ancient days. Its long-vanished waters had carved strange shapes out of the earth: tall upright forms like trees turned to stone, or like statues on pedestals. But there were other shapes in the red walls of the gorge that were not the work of nature: lowering facades of temples, pillared porticoes carved into the living rock, and the ornate fronts of tombs also, with friezes depicting the glorious deeds of the kings interred within. Fearsome colossi, stone giants with the heads of jackals or crocodiles, guarded the doors. Here, in days of old, every Zimbouran king had been entombed upon his death with his entire household—wives, concubines, slaves: all except his children. In this valley hundreds of men and women, at swordpoint, had drunk poison and perished beside the royal sarcophagi.
It was a desolate place, and now more so than ever: great patches of the already sere earth were blasted and blackened as if by fire, and the few hardy desert shrubs had been reduced to charred sticks. And scattered all about were the gnawed and burnt bones of animals: cattle, goats, horses, even the massive skeletons of elephants, all offered to feed the huge hunger of the beast that had made its dwelling place here. The small procession that now made its way along the dry bed of the river was aware of that forbidding presence. The faces of the soldiers were ashen, while their horses tossed their heads and snorted at the brimstone-and-carrion stench that lay heavy on the air. One of them reared, its frightened neigh echoing off the walls of the gorge. Its rider cursed, his own nerves as brittle as his mount’s. The oxen bellowed and balked until they had to be goaded forward.
As for the young woman lying bound in the cart, she had long since gone beyond fear into a stupor in which her surroundings seemed scarcely real. She had been a princess once, pampered and protected and loved by her doting widowed father and four elder brothers—all of them dead now, murdered by Khalazar’s troops. The fall in her fortunes had been so swift and irrevocable that Marjana had moved through her capture and subsequent enslavement in a trancelike state. This final ordeal at least promised to end those sufferings forever. She wept only a little, therefore, as she realized that she neared the end of her journey and of her life. In her mind she prayed that she be reunited with her parents and her brothers after death.
But oh, to enter Paradise by so terrible a door!
She tried to imagine a different scene: to pretend that she was on the path leading to her home, returning from a pleasure outing. Marjana shut her eyes, exchanging in her imagination the crude cart for one of her royal father’s open carriages. She could almost hear the tinkling of the little tin bells on the yaks’ harnesses as they drew the carriage steadily uphill. Many more of the longhaired mountain cattle grazed in the alps far above. For the yak was to the Shurka as the llama to the Marakite, the reindeer to the Rialainish: giver of milk and meat and hide, burden bearer and bride price, the oldest currency of the realm. Her father, being king, had herds numbering in the thousands. Farther away lay those wild mountain valleys where herds of wild mastodons and woolly rhinoceri roamed, but these sheltered slopes had been terraced and cultivated since ancient times. Above them loomed old ruins, carved into the living rock of the mountains—cliff cities built by the vanished Elei. She could see them clearly—and see, too, the mountain palace with its high protecting walls and watchtowers, and the kindly, kingly face of her father, and her brothers with their teasing eyes. She must indeed be near her end, for their faces to be so clear to her inward vision.
They await me in my final home . . .
The cart jolted against a stone again, and her eyes fluttered open unwillingly. Up ahead was a great frowning facade of pillars and statues cut into living rock, its doorless entrance utterly dark. Marjana averted her eyes, and a tremor shook her slender frame. Only a little longer now . . .
“Yonder is its
lair,” the captain said. “In the largest of the tombs.”
“You are sure the monster will not attack us?” asked a soldier.
The captain shook his head. “The goblin-men swore it would not. It is no mere brute, they say, but reasons like a man.”
“Still, we could leave the sacrifice here.”
“Are you mad? If she somehow managed to escape, Khalazar would have our heads! Tie her to a pillar, and then let us withdraw.”
They obeyed, and then made as if to leave, but as they did so there came a clanging noise and the captain staggered: an arrow had struck his helmet. The soldiers started and reached for their weapons, but to no avail: their enemies were hiding within the entranceway of another tomb on the opposite side of the valley. As more arrows flew, the soldiers fled in haste, howling, leaving the princess still bound to the stone pillar at the tomb’s mouth.
The raiders flowed out from the shadowed entrance and crossed the valley floor, some riding on horseback. Marjana looked up, her head clearing as she gazed great-eyed at her rescuers. A tall golden-haired figure dismounted to slash at Marjana’s bonds with a sword. The princess gave a cry as she was freed.
“Sir Damion!” And she flung herself at the figure’s feet, weeping, kissing the gauntleted hands of her deliverer. “I have heard the women tell tales of you—”
Lorelyn, startled, realized suddenly that in the silver armor, she might easily be taken for Damion. “I’m not—” she began. But Marjana sobbed with joy and pent-up anguish, clutching at the other woman’s hand, and crying out again and again.
“Sir Damion! How can I thank you?”
Lorelyn tried again to correct her, but at that moment they all fell silent as a low rumble came, like the voice of the earth itself, from the depths of the tomb before them. In the gloom within its yawning portal two lights appeared, like lamps borne by unseen hands, and with them came a sound of rasping breaths. The dragon had come.
Marjana rose with a scream. “Run! Run!”
