They would have to make the torches last as long as they could. And then they would go on in the dark. The drip within the rock occupied his attention.
Will you see that we have water before ... before whatever is supposed to happen to us does? Leo implored whatever guided him now. The scent of cinnamon embraced him again. He felt a vast calm, as if he had been lost and suddenly spied a known landmark.
The path turned downward, switched back, and turned again. Then it evened out, wider even than the road within that Asherah had discovered. The walls of the tunnel had been painstakingly smoothed. Into them, at regular intervals, were set torch holders, bronze, heavy, infinitely reassuring.
“Keep your eyes open,” Leo ordered, then broke off, as if shy of speaking in a place where no words had been heard for countless years. The sloping walls seemed to drink in his words; no, he could not think of drinking in words, or anything else, thirsty as he was.
“Look for side chambers,” he said more softly. The unknown builders had placed torch holders of bronze upon the walls they had planed with such care. Perhaps they had left torches behind, too.
Half a torch, and four tremors later, they found side chambers. In one of them, they found ancient wood, dressed and stacked and terribly dry. Perhaps it had been intended to shore up a side tunnel. But, no, it was too finely planed. Still, it would serve to make torches.
It would have been good to rest here, but the same compulsions that had drawn them into the tunnels, that had forced them to march on and on drew them forward.
Another torch later, they came upon another side chamber. Weapons dulled with the years were mounted upon the walls. Why would the builders leave an armory down here? Leo stepped close to the walls, examining the weapons. Ancient, they were; crude, perhaps; and wrought of bronze or flint of—he blew the dust away—black volcanic stone; but deadly for all of that. Georgios paused to test the temper of a bronze blade. Leo laid finger to a knife as like the tiny one he carried as a final weapon as if the same man had chipped them out of one chunk of glossy black rock from the fire's heart.
Kemal laid finger to a bow. After this many years of hanging idle, its string had perished.
“Take what you need,” Leo ordered. “They will not begrudge us.”
Taking the weapons stored here for so long felt like robbing a shrine. At the same time, he hated to leave anything behind lest it be used against them.
His men obeyed. Even Theodoulos took a dagger shaped like a deadly leaf. Now, they moved as if in a procession of dreamers. Did some alchemy of the underground taint the air with some drug that would first control them, then make them mad, and then, when it had stripped all vestige of their manhood from them, slay them?
If their deaths had been required, they would have happened already, Leo told himself. Death? If it were like sleep, it might even be welcome. His tongue felt huge in his mouth, but at least now the gurgle of the water running deep within the rock no longer tormented him.
“Look at the paintings,” Theodoulos whispered. “They make the ones in the valley look like a blind man's scrawl.” In among designs of vines, great cats, and serpents, came astonishingly lifelike representations of what had once, surely, been people who had posed for their portraits before the underground ways were sealed.
Priestesses, perhaps, wearing the regalia of their office and, in some cases, little else over bare breasts, the nipples painted in such a way that they glistened as if heavy with milk. Godlings, wearing the triple crowns that Leo had seen incised onto cliff walls in the upper air. Warriors and kings, marching in procession alongside him and his men.
Georgios blessed himself. “When I was a boy, they would tell me of the road that joined city to city beneath the earth. We all thought it was just a story we wanted to believe.”
“The sisters told me, too,” Theodoulos said. “They would tell me of a great city in the center of an underground plain, how it held all the treasures of the ages.” He swallowed. “How my mother waited for me there. And then they would feed me honeycake. I was the only son they had, cripple as I was.”
Kemal's belly growled. Someone else chuckled ruefully. Once or twice, as they had marched, someone had fallen out briefly, or leaned against a wall, faint for an instant with hunger that would be assuaged when they won through to their goal or not at all. For now, their bodies’ weaknesses were enemies to be kept at bay, too.
“I hear something.” Theodoulos broke the silence of their march.
Leo paused. Alive to every shift now in the air currents below the earth, he did not yet hear “something,” but he sensed a shift in the currents of air as they flowed through the great tunnels, forever refreshed from some unknown source. He shut his eyes, listening so intently that his head spun.
No, nothing yet. He signaled the men forward, but cautiously, regretting even the scraping their boots made on the stone.
The underground corridor widened yet further. Now it smoothed out almost into a road that expanded into a cavern vaster even than the halls within the underground city toward which they journeyed.
Now, the walls of the tunnel glistened with more than bronze or red and blue and green paints. Now, the walls shimmered in the circle of their torchlight with mosaics: purples and golds and silvers assembled with art and meticulous care, then abandoned.
Kemal ran a hand over the mosaics. “Seeing this could make someone believe that treasure city beneath the earth is more than a dream. I am afraid my kinsmen probably heard just enough that they decided to try to find their way down here themselves.”
Leo nodded. That was another of the many things he feared.
Again, the land quivered. Almost automatically now, he adjusted his pace to compensate.
Theodoulos waved them to a stop. “Don't you hear it yet?” He pointed. “Look up ahead.”
Ahead of the circle of light cast by their torch loomed complex shadows. Here several tunnels fed into the main highway, their entries arching in wide curves, as if this rich gathering of bronze and mosaics were a crossroads beneath the earth.
The shadows flickered and danced.
“Hide the torch!” Leo hissed. They dared not douse it.
The dance grew more intricate as another source of light beamed from a branching tunnel and quested at the shadows that they cast, even with their own torch hidden. Leo drew a deep breath, then held it, willing himself not to breath until he found the source of that light.
In the silence, he heard the pad-pad-pad of footsteps. And, from far behind it came a clash and a roaring that Leo had prayed never to hear again. Somehow, the Turks must have broken into the underground ways. They would be battering down the millstones and the walls; they would be slaughtering women and children, if the men left to guard them had failed utterly in their mission—and perhaps they had already done so and had spread out, determined to trace the legend of a queen city among the caves to its source and wrest what treasure they might from the earth.
Best to deal first with the enemy at hand, if they were to try to add their futile swords to the battle they heard.
Leo strained to filter the sound of footsteps from the clamor of far-off battle. This crossing-point deep within the earth was like a whispering gallery, bringing far sounds deceptively near.
There it was again, the soft, rhythmic pad of footsteps. Did a ghost, a demon, or a godling make noises when it walked? It was drawing closer.
For that matter, did a beast? Leo nodded, hoping his men would see. As they had done when they found Kemal, they drew their swords as soundlessly as they could. Leo's temples pounded. In a moment, he would have to breathe, and the unknown person approaching them would hear the sound.
Leo flattened himself against the wall, thinking a brief prayer of thanks to the ancient builders who had slanted the walls so that he could see, but the unknown approaching them could not.
The bobbing light paused, as if whoever bore it hesitated. Abruptly, it died.
They heard a lull i
n the far-off battle, as if two armies poised before hurling themselves forward again. Now, they could hear breathing. It was coming very close. There was only one person: one enemy, perhaps, or one demon—assuming demons breathed.
The cave trembled: well, they might have expected that. But the person up ahead came on more warily now. A few more steps and whoever it was would advance into the crossing. They could leap out with light of their own and dazzle him.
The footsteps paused. Then light kindled and bloomed, a gleaming sphere, white at its top and shading down the rainbow into all the colors of earth and sky. As it advanced into the center of the cave it seemed to shake, as if whoever bore it were uncertain of what lay ahead or as if the lightbearer fought for endurance. Or courage.
A gust of wind, scented with the complex incense that stirred Leo's senses, made the torch that Georgios bore flare up. At the same time, the torch coming at them from that side tunnel also flared up, just as its bearer stepped into plain sight.
It was Asherah.
His own blood roared in Leo's ears. Only the cord securing his sword about his wrist saved him from dropping it with a clatter that might have made all their hearts burst. He started forward.
“Don't go, lord!” Georgios dropped to his knees. He tried to hurl himself forward to restrain Leo, but Kemal cuffed him back.
Leo ignored them. What did Asherah think she was doing here? Hadn't he found her the safest place that he could? And where was her father, or, for that matter, Nordbriht, whom he had primed with nobly sentimental stories about guarding his heir until it was a wonder if the big man hadn't tried to sleep at her feet.
He was glad to know that she had had the sense to douse her torch, but those shimmering wards—he had seen her cast them once or twice before, but never so brightly. They might safeguard her, but she might as well also kindle a beacon that would tell any man or demon for miles around: here I am, abrim with power ... and with no damned brains at all.
She gasped and turned toward his footsteps. The light of her protective warding ran down the short blades she held in either hand, rippling down the markings of fine Damascus until her knives gleamed like icicles in the sun.
“Asherah!”
The knives clattered on the rock as she staggered back. The break in her control extinguished the sphere of light warding her. As the light faded, he saw her face: that of a sleepwalker waked from some dream. He had seen Theodoulos look just as moonstruck in the grip of some fantasy.
Insane coincidences happened in battle; and this was battle. But there was more to it. Asherah had walked as if she were in the grip of some power. Leo would have to wager his soul on that power's being the same one that sought to control him.
Her awareness of the world restored, Asherah drew breath to scream.
“Asherah, what are you doing here?”
Recognizing him at last, she cried out his name, then ran forward to hurl herself into his arms.
No one had ever terrified Leo that much. How had she dared?
“I tried to keep you safe, and I find you wandering down here,” he told her. He wrapped his arms about her as if he could shield her with his own body and the strength of his embrace. His hands smoothed frantically up and down her back—what was that bundle on it? Some sort of pack? At least she had not simply wandered off without preparation.
He heard himself chanting her name in welcome and reproof.
“It's all right, Leo, I was sent, I'm all right...” Once he was convinced she would not vanish out of his arms, he would have time to listen to what she said. But for now, it was more important to hold her and let her feel his relief, his fear, and his anger at finding her here. His tears ran into her hair, still fragrant with attar of roses.
Asherah flung her arms around him to brace herself as Leo shook her. She pressed her face against his shoulder until his passion of rage and fear abated. She was so little, and she had such strength. Her arms around him were the best thing he had ever felt. Leo let his fury subside in the comfort of her embrace, as if seeing her here below the earth was no different than waking at her side in the aftershock of a nightmare. The ground trembled underfoot, paused, then trembled again like a heartbeat. For the moment, that did not matter.
She raised her face, and he kissed her, feeling how cracked and dry his lips were as they pressed thirstily against hers. Her tears touched his mouth, and her welcome assuaged a fear Leo hadn't even known that he had that only some lure or compulsion of the power beneath the earth had thrust her into his arms the first time. He knew the look of a woman who had given herself for fear or power, had seen it on his mother's face. But it was not the look he saw now. She wept, but with joy at the sight of him.
Reluctantly, he freed his mouth from hers and looked down into her eyes.
“I tried to protect you,” he told her. “I thought I could at least give you that. Why couldn't you stay where I had you safe?”
“I'm safer where you are, Leo. Wherever you are.”
Again, he hugged her close and again kissed her, this time even harder than before. He felt the resistance leave her body and her knees buckle, and he swept her up for a long moment of welcome.
When he finally set her down, his men had edged out of the tunnel in which they had hidden. Kemal, of course, was grinning. Theodoulos had limped out to stand almost at her side.
Asherah turned in Leo's arms. “Your lips were parched,” she whispered to him. “Are you all so thirsty?”
Reaching for the pack she carried, she produced a leather bottle and handed it to him. “Here. Did you think I would just wander off? You should know I could not be so foolish!”
Her eyes glinted at him in what would have been anger if they had time for the luxury.
Theodoulos slipped to his knees, his hands going out to her. Hastily, Leo pressed the bottle into his hands. He drank, passed the bottle on, and tried to collect himself.
Leo's shaking ceased. For now. Keeping an arm about his wife as if to ensure that she would not slip away from him too, he drew her back toward his soldiers. If anyone snickered, Leo would not have to wait for the Turks to kill him: he might, or he might simply turn the wretch over to his wife.
“How did you come here, love?”
Asherah edged in against Leo's side, magnificently casting away the reserve she had always maintained in public.
“Were you down here for the earthquake?”
Leo's arm tightened about her shoulders. “The place rang like a bell,” he said. “I don't know how we were spared.”
It must have been hell up in the underground city, with women and children screaming, all crammed into such close quarters, supplies falling. A horrible thought struck him. “Your father ... Nordbriht...”
“You should have seen him, love. A millstone toppled, and he got his shoulder under it and held it long enough for the rest of us to shore it up and retreat. He managed to grab his axe and follow us. My father says he strained something, but Nordbriht swore he could fight. ‘Go now,’ Sister Xenia told me, and I went. She knew I had to find you.”
“Retreat?” Leo knew retreats, knew the terror and confusion that could slay almost as surely as swords or arrows. It would be bladework beneath the earth.
“The quake shocked open one of the entryways,” she told him. “All our work, and they got in anyhow.”
He pulled her close and held her, temporary reassurance, but one that he knew was as precious to her as to him.
“Did Ioannes’ message reach you?”
She nodded against his shoulder. “And then the earth seemed to try to turn itself inside out.”
If they lived, Leo knew that he would not be the only one to wake screaming from nightmares, to shiver in fear of the dark.
The shouts from levels high above them intensified, carried to them by the uncanny architecture of this place. The mosaics, half in shadow, seemed to quiver with the shocks and aftershocks that resonated through the earth. Asherah flinched.
�
��Let's get her someplace quieter,” said Leo. Safer, he meant; but safety had long since been forgotten.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Georgios, “but those are our families up above there.” He paused, clearly uncertain of how to address a woman who was his commander's wife, but also a stranger and a Jew. The struggle showed clearly on his face. Leo gave him no help.
“Lady,” Georgios ducked his head as he might before any woman of high birth. “I beg you forgive me, but I have a wife and three children up there, and one on the way...”
Asherah turned to smile at him. “We sent all the women with young children to safety. Sister Xenia led them. She wanted to stay and fight, and she is almost as strong as any man, but we told her that if she didn't go, my father would stay too. And he cannot fight, you know that.”
Frankly, Leo knew nothing of the sort. In a final battle, Joachim would fight until his heart gave way.
Georgios grunted, clearly skeptical.
“Remember the Exodus,” Asherah told him. “A desert wanderer who had been a prince, a priest, and a prophetess led an army of slaves. Could we do less?”
My heart, you shame us all. Leo smoothed back her hair from her forehead. As usual, she had lost her veils or discarded them.
“We did as you told us,” she looked up at Leo, all compliance now. “We withdrew, those of us who were told we must not fight. Nordbriht and the others said they would cover our retreat and join us.” Her voice broke. “Join us if they could.”
“Please God they can,” Theodoulos said. He leaned against the wall, drooping visibly. Asherah watched him, clearly concerned.
He should rest, her lips formed the words for Leo to see.
When Leo shook his head so slightly that only she could see it, she reached for her pack again. “I have wine here, food, drugs, even. We will need them to keep going.”
Leo shook her very gently, to stop her. “Where do you think we must go?” That was one question he had to ask. And the next one followed naturally. “And why are you here, and not with Sister Xenia and the others?”
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