All too soon the effect of the lethenderum wore off, leaving Andrion’s perceptions disconcertingly clear. If the priests had hustled him straight from this life to the next, he reflected glumly, he would by now be mercifully finished with reflection. But mercy was a concept alien to the nature of Minras. The priests had returned him here, giving him the leisure to fear not death itself but dying with his tasks unaccomplished.
The remote, unattainable vault of the sky darkened into the transparent teal blue of evening. Andrion’s hands lay spread in a placatory gesture upon the cold stone windowsill. He clenched them and turned away from the free air of heaven back into the dim, clammy chamber, determined to placate neither god nor man.
His bald account of the scene with Chrysais shaped Dana’s expression into contempt edged by pity; Sumitra’s into pity edged by contempt. His equally bald revelation of Eldrafel’s endgame sent a spasm of fear, then disgust, then defiance across each face before him, until at last he watched appreciatively as three masks of courage settled into place and three sets of gleaming eyes turned to him for direction. Surely he had direction to give. . . .
Tembujin shook his head. “You almost have to admire Eldrafel’s audacity,” he said, outraged by his own admiration. “He has found a way to avoid his own death and in the avoiding win an empire for his evil god.”
“You cannot know a god by his followers,” Sumitra said.
Dana glowered, arms folded. “Indeed, I can believe that Sardis was once led to excess by youthful zeal, not by Harus’s true wishes. But Minras stinks of a demonic influence, not divine.”
Andrion sensed her presence rather than hearing her words, still caught in that odd unity with her, an intimacy that was both intriguing and intolerable. There must be a reason, this all must have a reason—wait, wait . . . He could not take a deep breath; he was panting, they were all panting, chattering like magpies to keep from screaming.
“What was the purpose of that charade with Chrysais?” asked Tembujin.
“According to some customs,” Andrion replied, grateful for a brief intellectual exercise, “the king must be taken from the queen’s embrace to the death ritual, affirming his role as—you could say the generating principle. I do not know whether Chrysais actually intended to, er, consummate her embrace with me; perhaps she meant to at first, and then realized that kind of embrace was not what she really wanted.” He sighed; Minras did not lend itself to intellectual exercises.
“Eldrafel,” said Tembujin scornfully, “would not have cared one way or the other. Just as long as the letter of the ritual was observed.”
“As we fasted when we crossed the island,” Andrion continued. “For lack of food, not in preparation for a ceremony, but we fasted.”
Dana fingered her new shirt and trousers. “They have even made an attempt to dress us in our usual garb. We needed new clothes, yes, but . . .”
“Style, not substance,” said Sumitra. “Appearance is all.” She lifted her zamtak and plucked idly at it, as if seeking some magic combination of notes that would open the portals and free them. But the door did not budge.
Andrion glanced again out the window. His own rangy body, while clad again in a chiton and cloak, seemed naked without the lost falcon brooch, seemed hideously vulnerable without Solifrax. But the power of the sword is in me, he reminded himself. That is why Eldrafel has waited until now to kill me—try and kill me, he amended hastily.
“Is my image still sewn on the tapestry?” Sumi asked.
“Yes. But without your hair it seems to have no power over you. Your strength amazes me, my lady.” Andrion smiled at her, in wan apology for ever having measured strength by force of arms.
Sumitra asked with her own swift logic, “But is your image, and Dana’s and Tembujin’s, not on the tapestry at all?”
“No, they are not. I suppose because as monarchs we must move freely, drawn only by trickery.”
“Then you think we are to be sacrificed with you?” demanded Tembujin. “Surely we are meant to be more than just bait.”
“I assure you I have no intention of being sacrificed,” Andrion retorted, his dark eyes kindling, “not to Tenebrio, and certainly not on Eldrafel’s behalf.”
Dana turned, stamped away a few paces, spun back again. “Chrysais is no doubt enjoying the humiliation of Sabazel’s children.”
“Not as much as she thought she would,” said Sumitra. The zamtak warbled. Dana gesticulated to heaven, refusing any sympathy for Chrysais.
Andrion said, “Evidently they do not make such drastic sacrifice more than once a generation. Perhaps the rites vary from time to time. Perhaps no one really knows the rules of this game.” He realized his fists were clenched again, and his jaw was set so tightly his ears ached. “If only we can return safely to Iksandarun, by Harus, by Ashtar, then I vow never to complain about paperwork again!”
Tembujin’s brows, black wings against his bronze skin, shot up under his hair. “Indeed, my camel herd looks quite appealing.”
“I would gladly weed Danica’s garden all by myself,” offered Dana, “and clean out the dove roosts in the temple to boot.”
Sumitra drew a flourish from the zamtak. “Ah, the interminable receptions for the councilors, the squirming courtesies of their wives. I would greet them all with open arms!”
The door opened and a company of soldiers jostled in the doorway. The moment burst and emitted a cloud of apprehension.
One soldier took Sumi’s zamtak from her hands and set it aside. The others ushered the four—victims? Andrion asked himself, and he answered, never—into the corridor. A corridor that coiled like a worm through walls of moldy rock, through air that thrummed with a chill and malignant vitality. Too many guards escorted them to even think of escape. Even if they had somewhere to go.
Sumitra set her hand on Andrion’s arm as if they were entering a state reception, and he laid his own hand on hers. How could he leave her sweet jasmine kisses, her body, which was opulent without being in the least jaded, her placid spirit, and her steel-braced demeanor? Perhaps they would be rejoined after death—he had always believed that somehow Danica and Bellasteros had at last found peace together.
Do not be ridiculous, he told himself. You are not going to die.
Tembujin offered his arm to Dana. She refused it with a look that would have dropped one of his camels dead in its tracks. If I must die, her manner said, it will not be on a man’s arm.
Amid the dank, uneasy air another breath stirred, a distant memory of free wind. And suddenly they emerged into the outside, into a breeze fresh from the sea. Andrion inhaled, thinking for a moment he could taste anemone and asphodel. The wind caressed his warm cheeks, lifted his hair from his head, murmured sweet nothings in his ear.
On his other side Dana’s nostrils flared, and she almost smiled. And you, Andrion thought, blood of my blood. . . .
The wind curdled and died, overcome by the chill reek of sorcery, sulfur, and decay. But that brief freshness, like the clarity of the sky, was a good omen. He would believe that. He had to believe that. He exhaled the scent of Sabazian flowers and felt his chest constrict.
They were in a basin in the mountainside, an amphitheatre roofed by a vast pink and violet sky. The peak of the mountain brooded blackly behind them; before them columns ringed the rim of the basin like fingers groping at the twilight. In the uncanny light the rock seemed only a daubed backdrop in a theatre.
Andrion and Sumitra, Dana and Tembujin, were installed on a dais to one side of the amphitheatre’s floor. Of the various soldiers standing about, spears dim gleams in the gathering darkness, none seemed to be Jemail. Maybe the man had not been a spy after all, and had already been put to death. Maybe he had escaped. Maybe he would come rushing in at the last moment and save them all. . . . No, Andrion thought, the man was too intelligent to throw himself away so rashly.
The sky darkened into polished indigo studded by stars. A faint silver glow in the east presaged the rising of the moon. Eyes glinted amid the columns as if the temple was a beast stretching and awakening; Andrion realized with a start that the basin was surrounded by spectators clad in indistinct ash-gray robes. A slash of charcoal on the opposite side of the floor deepened, becoming a fissure like an axe-cut dividing the temple into two halves. A narrow bridge without handrails arched from one side of the cleft to the other.
A figure stood upon the bridge. That chased-gold hair and beard, that marble face were unmistakable; Eldrafel bowed tauntingly to his erstwhile guests and made a grand, sweeping gesture to the sky.
The full moon rose slowly, ponderously, over the rim of the world, reluctant to be called by such as he. But it came nonetheless. Its light painted the temple and the mountain not with Sabazian quicksilver but with a livid phosphorescence. The stars faded, the sky turned a pallid slate gray. Under its pitiless gleam the shadows were refined into dense, black shapes, tangible nothingness.
Dana shuddered, sickened. Andrion’s necklace muttered against his throat. Evil upon evil, he wanted to scream, perverting the moon, making it not a symbol of light but of darkness. . . . His cry gurgled in his throat.
A bull’s horn sounded in a low, eerie wail. The frieze of faceless watchers responded with a chant.
Eldrafel gestured again. Robed figures staggered forward bearing a huge krater. The caldron was incised with turbulent scenes of war and death. Gorgon faces leered from the handles, tongues lolling, eyes rolling in drunken spasms. One priest produced what looked like a goblet, ladling into it liquid from the krater; Eldrafel took it, threw back his head and drank. He held a skull, Andrion saw, cunningly sheathed in silver.
Sumitra trembled on his arm. Tembujin swore under his breath. The necklace hissed, tugged, fell back. Yes, the guards were intent on the ceremony, not on their prisoners, but how . . . The watchers began to file down from their seats and past the krater. Each received a clay cup of liquid. The chanting harshened, achieving a note of menace that curled the hair on Andrion’s neck. Every fiber in his body contracted in response.
Two priests carried cups to a particularly opaque shadow at one side of the floor. As the moonlight crept onward, the darkness parted like a curtain. Chrysais sat on a throne carved with weathered winged gargoyles, Gard on a stool at her feet. One of her hands rested like a claw on his shoulder, whether protecting him from the evil ritual or trying to thrust him into it, Andrion could not tell.
The boy was stiff with sulky compliance; his teeth seemed to have turned to granite, so tightly did he hold his jaw. Turquoise and amethyst weighted his narrow chest. Andrion thought, it is he who deserves pity. But something in the boy’s attitude refused pity.
As if aware Andrion watched him, Gard glanced up. In the moment Andrion had the boy’s attention he winked at him, wondering as he did so if he promised something he could not deliver. But the boy loosened, forgiving the emperor for being related to him—not surprising, considering his meager choice of relatives. His pallor ebbed to an excited flush.
Andrion laid his hand on his necklace. The moon and the star thrilled against his flesh; a message, but what, gods, what?
Grudgingly, Andrion looked at Chrysais. Beneath her gaudy mask her face had shriveled; that youth he had once seen in her was now only cruel illusion, ravaged by passion. Perhaps she grew so weary that peace would be more welcome than any passion. But her eyes were anything but peaceful, darting in flat blue gleams from Andrion to Eldrafel to Gard and upward to the glaucous face of the moon.
The many portals into the mountain emitted breath after cold breath. The sky glazed over with frost. The chanting was the moan of a winter storm, and yet no wind stirred; each robe and each shadow hung like carved drapery in the pallid light.
Eldrafel swaggered forward and flourished the skull before the prisoners. “One of your earlier victims?” Andrion asked evenly.
Laughing, Eldrafel drank again. Crimson liquid sloshed through the eye holes, gaping in a spasm of terror. A miasma of herbs and honey drifted from krater and skull alike. Dana sipped warily at a cup offered her by an anonymous robed figure and spat. “Wormwood, henbane, belladonna, thornapple, fermented honey. A witch’s brew, if ever there was one.” The spittle at her feet spun a thread of smoke into the cold air.
Everyone, even the soldiers, drank deeply. Except for Eldrafel, who threw the skull carelessly into the krater, and Gard, who reached for his mother’s cup and had it snatched from him. Despite the potency of the brew, Chrysais’s rouged cheeks grew paler, not pinker, as she drained her cup.
Priests set crowns of crimson amaranth on Andrion’s and Sumitra’s hair. Ice flowers, as heavy as bands of iron. Sumitra winced; Andrion took her garland from her head, was prevented from throwing it down by flashes of obsidian and bronze from the hovering priests and guards, compromised by placing it upon his own head. His neck started to bow under the weight of the two wreaths, and with an oath he straightened.
Eldrafel pinched Andrion’s arm, testing his ripeness, perhaps, and wiped his hand on his robe with a supercilious sneer. “Here is your sacrifice,” he announced to the gathered crowd. “Andrion Bellasteros, King of Sardis, Emperor, brother of Queen Chrysais, who comes here of his own will to give himself to Tenebrio.” The chanting quieted, but remained a drone beneath the singsong rhythms of Eldrafel’s voice.
“And another sacrifice to the glory of the lord of darkness: Andrion’s son and heir.”
Andrion ground his teeth. Very tidy, to eliminate not only the current occupier of the throne, but any potential rivals. Sumitra shuddered, melding herself to Andrion’s side. He wrapped an arm around her. Sumi, my shield. . . . His free hand flexed, but remained empty. Despite the cold his face flushed hot; his mind spun, striking sparks from the flint of his will.
Gard started, struck by one of those sparks. Of course, Andrion told himself, we, too, are of the same blood. He nodded to the boy’s grave eyes; something will happen soon. I will make it happen. His jaw ached, set as tightly as Gard’s. The notes of a flute slithered among the columns, repeating the storm wail of the chanting. But still the wind was silent.
“These lesser rulers,” announced Eldrafel, “Khazyari and Sabazian, shall be sacrificed to a lesser god: Taurmenios, in the arena at Orocastria.”
Dana’s reply was a muttered epithet, Tembujin’s an obscenity. So they were not in danger here and now, Andrion told himself. A mote of relief. His necklace coiled on his throat, amid the nervous sweat that should surely have turned to snowflakes by now, but had not.
Eldrafel turned away from his captives. He cast his robe down. His body in the moonlight was a gilded idol, his jewels blue, purple, and green ice, his armband shining coldly. He wore only a codpiece and belt, but did not shiver. His languor fell away like a snakeskin as slowly he began to dance.
“Hail, leader of souls,” shouted a slurred voice. “Hail, lord of the dance.” Eldrafel’s cool mien did not change. He stepped and spun, sewing light to shadow in a litany to his dark lord. The muscles coiled and loosed in his buttocks. Andrion stared, fascinated and repulsed, and fascinated by his repulsion; Dana made a sound part moan, part snarl. It was degrading to be compelled by beauty so flawed, and Eldrafel knew it.
The music rose and fell, the piercing wail of the flute underlaid by a chanting so deep as to be barely perceptible. But the very stones beneath Andrion’s feet reverberated with the melody. It was just imprecise enough, making just enough irrational loops and glides, to be inhuman. The columns themselves seemed to shift, following the pattern of the dance. Step, step, turn. Step, turn, step.
Andrion squinted. The temple was a bowl of cool, indifferent moonlight. The stones, the people, the krater and its contents, were the translucent gray of Eldrafel’s eyes. Only the shadows were real, thronging behind the priest as he danced, linking arms with him, repeating his steps.
“No,” Tembujin said suddenly in Andrion’s ear. “He is dancing alone. Only illusion, that the shadows dance. I—I can tell.”
The frieze of glittering eyes dimmed, the insubstantial bodies swayed. Creeping hallucination, Andrion thought. Part sorcery, part drink. Chrysais sat motionless in her chair, eyes fixed unblinking on Eldrafel’s form as it threaded light to darkness. But Gard shifted restlessly, watching Andrion as if for some sign. Andrion should have felt foolish, standing there helpless. But his body was warming with a grim, lucid determination, his sinews winding tightly, his necklace dancing its own dance against the pulse leaping in his throat.
Suddenly harsh bellowing blotted the music. Eldrafel beckoned. A huge strong-shouldered bull with long polished horns was led onto the floor, struggling with the six soldiers clinging to its halter. Behind it came a troupe of human figures, leaping and dancing, surrounding two shambling men which Andrion’s cold-annealed perceptions recognized as the two guards he and Dana and Tembujin had overcome just before they freed Sumitra. “Harus!” he swore under his breath.
Whether the dancers were men or women he could not tell; all were kilted and draped with necklaces and bracelets, all in the harsh metallic moonlight were drained of individuality. They were very young, he decided, still in that smooth and slender early adolescence before the necessities of the flesh molded them into male or female.
The music continued, blending with the bellows of the animal as its handlers abandoned it in the midst of the floor. Its eyes were bright pinpricks of madness. Its nostrils fluttered. Eldrafel pirouetted so close before its face that his hair brushed its horns. It charged.
Eldrafel was not there; he stood again upon the bridge, watching with proprietary interest as the dancers ran forward. Surely they, too, had been drugged, for with ecstatic leaps and hand clappings they threw themselves at the raging animal. The two guards were carried along in the rush. They jumped and clutched, and the sharp horns threw them aside like fish yanked flailing from the ocean and dashed against a rock.
Their screams were short and sharp and suddenly ended. The screaming of the bull crashed like a tidal wave against the columns and resonated in Andrion’s head. Sumitra, with a short cry, turned her face into Andrion’s chest. The temple shuddered.
Gard blanched and hid his face. Gods, Andrion wailed, what kind of parents would force a child to witness this savagery? Chrysais stroked Gard’s hair absently, sadly, knowing she could not soothe him.
The troupe of dancers whirled. The bull stamped, head lowered, great shoulders hunched. Someone ran forward and seized the horns. The animal convulsed. A slender body flew through the air and struck the floor with the terrible moist sound of a melon cleaved in two. The others seemed not to notice, continuing to weave patterns about the huge bull, the embodiment of Taurmenios, the embodiment of the madness of Minras. . . . Another leaped, seized the horns, flipped and landed upon the animal’s back. Again the bull contorted itself; the acrobat slipped, fell, and was trampled.
Prisoners given a chance for reprieve? Andrion wondered, his head spinning. Children dancing into the afterlife, believing that this ghastly spectacle pleased the gods? But then, it certainly pleased Tenebrio. His stomach heaved, and he closed his throat on bile and outraged cry both. He clutched Sumitra even more closely against his chest.
The dancers twirled and gestured, throwing each other toward the bull. Andrion blinked, looked again; still the forms darted through the moonlight like silvery flying fish skimming the ocean waves. They flashed, and the horns flashed, and the smooth and graceful limbs became ugly dark-mottled meat upon the implacable stone.
They were all gone. A low, predatory murmur came from the crowd, the dark god not yet satiated. Eldrafel’s tongue passed lovingly between his lips. He stepped over the mangled bodies toward the bull. Its chest heaved, its horns sagged; then, crazed by the sickly sweet scent of blood, it charged again. Oblivious to and yet preeningly aware of the watching eyes, he seized the bull’s horns just as their red, razor-sharp tips touched his chest. The bull jerked its head up. Eldrafel rode the horns, his body curving into a somersault, landed on the bull’s broad back and somersaulted again. He leaped with infernal grace to the stone floor, not even out of breath. Exalted by sorcery and death, he laughed. His upraised hands were stained with blood.
“Khalingu!” exclaimed Tembujin. “He really did that!”
That was what all the acrobats were to have done, Andrion realized. But they were mortals, not demons. Mortals whose sensibilities had been long eroded by the lurking evil of this place. His spine contracted, his body trembled, and sternly he quelled the weakness of his own flesh.
A mob of priests and soldiers rushed forward. Obsidian and bronze winked. The bull’s bellows ceased abruptly. A pool of dark carnelian spread bubbling and seething across the stones.
The music stopped. The frieze of watchers shattered. Robed figures swarmed, bathing in the blood of man and bull like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Andrion’s appalled eyes recognized Rue, her hands and cheeks matted red, her curious liquid eyes swirling with an uncertainty only heightened by drink and hysteria. She plucked at the elegant figure of Eldrafel, pleading, perhaps, for some reassurance. Mockingly he fondled her and wiped his hands on her robe.
Chrysais lay back on the cold lap of her throne, eyes closed. Gard huddled on his stool. From the spilled blood rose a mist, tentative at first, then thickening into a frost-faceted veil. The reek of sorcery intensified until Andrion choked on it. The moon was as sickly as Sumitra’s face, which peered up at him—I am frightened, forgive me. . . . We are all frightened, he told her silently.
They stepped back, away from the gasping, heaving mass of bodies. Sharp if somewhat wobbly points pricked them back onto the dais. Defiantly Andrion dashed the amaranth crowns to the floor. The petals shattered, skittering across the stone like beads from a broken necklace. The drunken, distracted guards did not protest. Andrion’s brow tingled as if touched by the diadem.
Eldrafel turned. One gesture sent the robed figures scurrying back to their places on the rim of the basin, like columns amid the eddies of mist, now concealed, now revealed. Their eyes burned red as the eyes of hunting wolves. Another chant began, quick guttural words like racing heartbeats vibrating in the belly of the mountain.
Several guards dragged the pitiful remains of men and beast to the edge of the abyss and threw them in. A light flickered in the depths to receive them, not pale, like that of the frozen moon, but a florid luminescence that welled upward and tinted pink the drifting coils of mist.
Eldrafel danced along the edge of the cleft and across the narrow bridge, leaning perilously far, pulling back. The mist grew opaque, becoming smoke lit from beneath by tongues of sullen flame. And yet the air remained stiflingly cold.
Eldrafel leaped onto the dais, his eyes mirroring the crawling scarlet light of the chasm, grinning in an ecstasy of evil. Tembujin’s glance darted from abyss to Eldrafel and back. He frowned.
“Now it is your turn,” Eldrafel said. “Tied and torn and cast into the depths; I shall give you a few more moments to anticipate.” He pulled Sumitra close and planted a lingering kiss upon her mouth; before she could react, he released her and kissed Andrion as well. His body stank of rich unguents and sorcery, but not, despite his exertions, of sweat.
Sumi spat, as Dana had spat out the poison drink, her face convulsed with disgust. Andrion’s lips burned, violated by venom. With a furious snarl he wiped his mouth on his hand and struck out, but Eldrafel, unperturbed, had already pirouetted away.
To where two waiting figures held a linen-wrapped bundle. Eldrafel pulled the cloth away. He raised high the shield of Sabazel and its consort, the sword Solifrax. They glimmered faintly, not reflecting the ghastly light of the sky or the bloody light of the depths, but for just a moment gleaming with the radiance of a free sun and moon. Then they faded into dull lumps of metal.
Andrion quivered as if his own body were transfixed by the sword. Behind him Dana emitted a low cry of rage and despair. In Eldrafel’s hands the joined weapons were an image of sexual brutality, their purposes mocked, Andrion’s love for Sabazel blasphemed.
And yet, Andrion told himself, forcing a breath from the suffocating air, leaning forward like a runner before a race, and yet he was almost relieved to see the two so combined. Now he understood the odd unity he felt with Dana. Now he understood what it was he could, he must do.
Flames leaped from the chasm, casting fantastic shadows across the temple. Eldrafel laid the shield and sword at Chrysais’s feet, responding to her outstretched hand with a bow so exquisitely courteous it was a jeer. He turned and began to dance again with his wraiths of smoke and sorcery. The chant swelled; the mountain festered with it, lurched and spun like a whirlpool around the solitary figure that danced a litany to a dark god.
Andrion held Sumitra. Dana’s hand pressed into his back. Tembujin at his left muttered, “I can tell what it is he intends us to see, and yet I can see that it is not there. No flame, no smoke, just the dark chasm and a few strands of mist like will-o’-the-wisps.”
“Thank you,” Andrion said. If Tembujin could not be sucked into hallucination, then neither would he. His mind danced, each thought, each sight, each scent a crystalline bubble prismed with implication. Wonderful, he told himself, how peril concentrates thought. His necklace purred agreement.
His companions were profiles chased one after the other upon frozen moonlight and lurid flame; Dana an edged weapon, Sumitra a newly minted coin, Tembujin an exotic and yet familiar statue. Silver-rimed faces, too precious to waste on the sickly paradoxes of Minras.
Sumitra, he told himself, has been bait to draw me here. If I were not here, she would be bait again. Dana and Tembujin only become lesser rulers when I am here as a greater one. Eldrafel can only use them as threads in his evil tapestry when I am his needle. One chance, all I need is one chance to kill him—I, too, am corrupted, he thought, writhing, wanting to so cold-bloodedly kill!
Andrion looked again at Gard’s ashen face. And Eldrafel needs him, too, for now; but the time will come when Gard dies of some mysterious disease . . . I must save the boy, I must commit him to saving himself by giving him the chance to refuse corruption.
The sword and shield lay on the floor by Chrysais’s feet. By Gard’s. Eldrafel could not turn the weapons to his own use, but he could flaunt them, denying their power to those people to whom they were so much more than weapons. Such appalling profanation would win battles more handily than if he did control the power of shield and sword.
Eldrafel, self-absorbed, pranced along the rim of the abyss, across the bridge, back again. Chrysais’s features were blotched clay, resenting the satiety she had craved. Several priests, armed with daggers and ropes, stepped toward the dais. The chanting reverberated in succeeding waves through the rock, echoing upon itself.
Gard looked up, summoned by Andrion’s fierce resolve. And his face ignited to his uncle’s command. Andrion tore the necklace from his throat and pressed it into Dana’s hand. “Ah!” she gasped, as if he had struck her in the stomach. But that link between them tautened and held. “Andrion!” Sumitra wailed. Dana seized her shoulders, holding her back from following as Andrion leaped from the dais.
Gard jumped from his stool, at last unleashed. He swept up the sword and shield and almost dropped them, startled by their weight. The priests shouted. Eldrafel stopped in mid-gesture, limbs held in elegant angles, head tilted.
Gard threw the weapons. They flashed, frost and fire mated, and Andrion picked them effortlessly from the air. His hand fit the hilt of Solifrax; Daimion’s sword, Bellasteros’s sword, his own sword that he had won; smoothly he pulled it free of the shield. Chiming, the silver metal of the shield flowed together and the wound in the star healed itself.
Sword and shield rang as one, a long sustained note like a plucked string of the zamtak. The sound was not loud but incisive, cutting the chant in mid-phrase and shivering on through the sudden silence. The smoke wraiths fled. The watchers drew back. Chrysais jerked erect, her mask thinning suddenly to reveal—not quite relief, not quite disappointment.
Gard’s laugh of delight, pure and unaffected, cleared the miasma of sorcery as surely as did the ring of the shield.
Andrion set the shield upon his own arm. It was strangely light, carrying itself, permitting him only to guide it. Its emblazoned star pulsed, reflecting the clear radiance of the sword and doubling it. But the odd unity with Dana continued, no longer uncomfortable but as easy as the curve of the shield fitting the curve of the sword.
The watchers huddled with tiny gibbering noises, their eyes not feral gleams but moist drunken blurs. Guards gestured ineffectually around the dais. Cold flame licked the rim of the chasm. The spinning world halted abruptly and even the bleak face of the moon steadied.
Dana clutched the necklace to her breast. Did she cry aloud, or was it only a tendril of her thought that lashed Andrion’s mind like a whip: My shield, by Ashtar, my shield; gods, what other man save him can raise my shield!
Sumitra stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, her great brown eyes glistening with shock. By all the gods, Andrion howled silently, Sumi, I cannot leave you—I must leave you—I vow in the name of Harus, of Ashtar, I shall return for you and for our child and for the Empire that is mine!
Tembujin twitched as if he meant to leap forward and help Andrion; the guards seethed clumsily around him, Sumitra swayed, and he grasped her instead. Andrion could sense his-thought, too; do something, you idiot, before someone realizes they can threaten us and force you to disarm!
Eldrafel stood before him, his lips drawn back in a snarl, his teeth glinting like ice pearls. He raised his hands and a sudden force like a blast of black fire lanced through the mist. But Andrion was expecting that. The shield leaped up, turning the blast with another ring. Did the demon priest’s perfect features warp with surprise? Good. Very good.
Andrion edged to the side, toward the abyss and its gelid flame. Illusion, he reminded himself. The fire is illusion. My mother once told me of a fiery chasm and how her shield protected her.
Eldrafel spun about to see Gard’s small fists gesturing triumphantly. The priest hissed like a striking cobra and slapped the boy sprawling.
Chrysais jumped from the throne, stumbled, swept Gard into her arms. Her face was hidden in his hair; his face, a pale oval smeared with blood from a cut lip, stared up at Eldrafel in unalloyed hatred.
Andrion winced. But perhaps it was just as well for the boy to realize he did not watch an impersonal melodrama.
Eldrafel was upon him again, hands raised. At last! Andrion lunged for his heart, Solifrax slicing a shining arc through the smoke. But the blade turned suddenly, twisting in Andrion’s hand as if meeting some resistance thicker than flesh, and slipped along Eldrafel’s ribs leaving a gory but shallow wound. Hellfrost and damnation, is the man invulnerable!
The shield emitted a shower of light. Eldrafel’s upraised hands remained empty. His face opened in amazement. His chest was streaked with blood, slow ruby drops oozing over the smooth beauty of his abdomen; good, Andrion thought, you can bleed, you bastard!
It was Andrion who grinned now, in a fierce joy. He stepped backward, without any grace whatsoever but with a great deal of caution, onto the narrow bridge. Fire licked at his feet, but he felt no heat, only a chill breath from the abyss. And what was down there? The corridors of Mount Tenebrio were as tangled as those of the palace in Orocastria. The mountain, too, must have a basement. If not, Andrion thought with a shuddering sigh, I die on my own terms, with the symbols of Empire and Sabazel in my hands.
Suddenly, in answer, a wind pealed down from the indigo-dark vaults of the sky. The moon spun amid clouds of star-stuff. The shield and sword blazed with an unsullied white light.
Eldrafel stepped onto the end of the bridge. The black force lanced out again. Again Andrion turned the blast, this time back into the priest’s face. Like an ugly sea creature hidden in the heart of a gleaming nautilus shell, something moved behind Eldrafel’s gold and marble facade, some vile inhuman shadow.
Andrion blinked. The vision vanished as fast as it had formed. Eldrafel glared at him, spitting curses, his clear gray eyes mottled with flecks of vermilion, his hair knotted by the wind.
With one last desperate glance at the three moon-gilt figures on the dais, Andrion stepped off the bridge. The light of sword and shield bore him up and the wind sustained him, so that he floated into the red depths as light as a falcon’s feather. Was it blood that rushed in his head, or the flutter of wings? Whichever, the flames of illusion parted before him.
“Gods,” he muttered between teeth locked in a spasm of courage and fear, “gods, make sport of me if you will, but protect mine!” The pale mark of the necklace on his throat throbbed.
A sound like the howling of jackals eddied down the cleft. “Throw them all in!” shouted Eldrafel, his voice no longer melodious but burred with fury.
Chrysais’s bitter scream was louder. “No, we must keep them to draw him back!”
“This insult to Tenebrio must be avenged!”
Chrysais laughed, high and shrill, flirting with hysteria. “Tenebrio has tasted your blood tonight, my king; yours and this your son and heir’s. That will sate him for now.”
And Gard’s wail pierced the darkness, “His son? His?” The hatred in his voice rusted into anguish.
The wind died. The voices faded. Andrion was surrounded by hollow silence. The flames shredded into nothingness, consumed by a cerulean twilight that was neither light nor dark, neither victory nor defeat, but continued struggle. . . . He was floating, he realized. He could not really float.
In that moment of doubt stone came up to meet him and struck him senseless.