The setting sun was a crimson flare on the western horizon. The new moon was a ghostly crescent floating in the pink luminescence that swept eastward across the arch of the sky. The walls of Sabazel blushed, and the ice-crown of tall Cylandra glistened rose and amber.
A hush fell over the city. Small shepherdesses stilled the bleating of their flocks and lowered the gates of the pens behind them; chickens clucked drowsily to their roosts; bees buzzed to their hives replete with nectar. The guards above the Horn Gate leaned on their spears and gazed warily at the bedraggled company waiting outside.
It had been a harrowing journey. Fearing to stop and rest, Andrion had driven them onward over rough country, sparing neither horses nor men. He had sustained himself by anticipating this sanctuary. Now, at last, he was here, and he breathed deeply of the scented air of Sabazel. No asphodel to sear his senses, not now; no exotic perfumes to remind him of Iksandarun or Sardis. The subtly familiar odors of charcoal fires and fresh herbs filled his mouth and nose, and he felt his sweat- and dirt-caked face split into a smile.
Then he stole a sideways glance at Bellasteros, and his smile died. The emperor clung with a desperate tenacity to his horse, his back bent, his face seamed and flushed. His hair and beard were flecked with gray; his eyes were no longer a rich brown but bleached taupe, seeing nothing. The madness followed him even here, and he was sick unto death.
Gods, Andrion prayed, wrenching the thought yet again from some deep core of faith; gods, whatever your names, let him live. I am not strong enough to see him die.
The gates opened. A Sabazian sentry appeared, her javelin at the ready. “The queen directs that only you, Prince Andrion, and the emperor may enter. The others must camp outside. Food will be sent to them, and they shall be under the protection of the goddess Ashtar.”
Ashtar, give me strength. “My thanks,” replied Andrion. He signed to the soldiers; obediently, their lined faces blank, they began to dismount. Only Miklos’s eyes still gleamed with thought, asking if the exotic folk of Sabazel could be trusted. Andrion nodded reassurance to the skeptical Sardian.
Thank the gods—or perhaps it was Toth to whom thanks were due—that Miklos had come with them. His stoic perseverance had carried Andrion through more than one despairing midnight. Truly, he thought, if Sarasvati had lived, Miklos would be worthy of her.
“Follow me, if you please,” said the sentry, and once again Andrion kneed his poor wheezing horse into shambling movement. Exhaustion sucked at him, and his grainy eyelids started to close. With a start he forced them open. Not much longer; Danica and Ilanit and Dana were close. Dana, he called silently, let me touch you.
The small stone houses, the temple square, streamed by him in a vague golden haze. The clopping of the horses’ hooves blended with the cooing of doves; it was a soothing rhythm, a mother’s heartbeat . . . He started awake again. Sabazians lined the narrow streets, watching him and his father and the sentry, incredulous, perhaps resentful. Perhaps merely curious at the sudden admittance of men into man-forbidden Sabazel.
Bellasteros swayed in his saddle. Andrion leaned over to seize the reins of his father’s horse, overbalanced, grabbed at his own mount. “Not much farther,” he whispered.
Bellasteros’s features were wiped clean of any thought, any feeling.
“Danica,” whispered Andrion, louder, urgently. “She is here, she awaits you with healing in her hands.”
Something like comprehension flickered in Bellasteros’s vacant eyes. He sat a little straighter, trying to square his shoulders; the bloody bandage on his arm tightened and he gasped in pain. The flush drained from his face, leaving it pale and cold.
“Not much farther,” said Andrion. “Just up the street and around the corner to the queen’s garden.” He realized with a sinking heart he was talking in the bright high-pitched murmur one would use with a child. But this was Sabazel, and all worries were to end in Sabazel.
A face was before him. Strong angles, clear planes, fine brows arching upward beneath smooth blond hair. Steady green eyes holding him transfixed between one breath and the next. He leaned forward, drawn into that face.
“Well, little brother,” said Ilanit, “once again I break the laws of Sabazel for a man. For two men, this time; law-breaking becomes easier, as one grows accustomed to it.”
Andrion stared stupidly at her. Yes, she had lain with Patros during the campaign before Iksandarun, outside Sabazel, outside the turning of the year. They had suffered for their crime, but not overmuch, for their passion had flowered into Dana, and could not have been wrong. No, he had the story backward, the whole world shifted and ran backward and he and his father found their strength slipping away, their manhood disappearing; the emperor and his heir became supplicants, returning to infancy and seeking the warm womb of the mother.
“My sister,” he groaned, “I have brought you such a dilemma.”
“Do not apologize, Andrion.” She smiled, and her eyes softened. “Of all the women of Sabazel, I alone am blessed with a brother.” She stepped forward, reached up, caught him as he slipped from the horse.
The ground heaved beneath him, his knees wobbled, and he clutched at her. She propped him against her shoulder and gave some command; other hands took Bellasteros gently from the saddle, placed him on a litter and bore him away.
Andrion winced. That feeble shell was not his father; his father had been stolen from him. “Ilanit, his wound has become inflamed and I fear his mind is muddied with sorcery.” He explained the defeat, the journey. Gods, he thought for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time the thought struck him harder than a black-barbed arrow, my sister Sarasvati is gone. Tears ran suddenly from his eyes to hang shining in the beard on his cheeks.
“Come.” murmured Ilanit, grim and sorrowful, cajoling in her turn. “Rest now. And tomorrow we shall wash you clean of fear and shame, and of dirt, as well.”
He had to smile at that; he sniffed and swallowed his tears. Surely Ilanit was another mother to him. She was that much older than he, the child of Danica’s girlhood as he had been the child of her maturity. He leaned against her gratefully as she guided him up the steps to her garden.
The leaves of the trees, laden with apricots and figs and almonds, stirred toward him and spread the last of the sunlight in his path. A breeze purled past his face and he could almost hear the words in it: Come, beloved, come to me. The flank of Cylandra rose before him, reflecting the sunset like a faceted stone; the high plains of Sabazel faded into dusky illusion. A solitary raptor, a falcon, surely, coasted down the wind, its bright eye solemnly regarding its sons’ entry into the stronghold of Ashtar.
Andrion’s thoughts stumbled as awkwardly as his feet. Something about the falcon god . . . The bronze image was still in the saddlebag. Forgive me, he told it silently, I shall rescue you tomorrow. His head fell forward, and once again Ilanit buoyed him up. She led him to the little house built close against the side of the mountain, and opened the door.
Ah, thought Andrion, the queen’s chambers. The great bed surrounded by gauzy hangings where he had, no doubt, been conceived; the walls frescoed with the exploits of ancient Sabazians. The face of Mari, the companion repudiated by Daimion, gazed out at him. But Bellasteros never repudiated Danica. Why, then, had the gods let him be cursed?
The hangings of the bed had been tied back. The emperor lay among the pillows like a carved effigy, unmoving, eyes closed, his sword sheathed at his side. A figure leaned over him, wiping his face with a cloth; Shandir, who had lifted Andrion from his mother’s body long ago, on a legendary midwinter’s night.
“Father?” he croaked.
A light flared. A hand lifted an oil lamp from a small table and held it high. Emerald eyes fixed him, held him, sustained him. “Mother,” he said. He withdrew from Ilanit’s grasp and with one last effort of will stood tall, his hands upraised in worship, in supplication. “Mother, please help us.” He could not tell if he spoke to his mortal parent or to the goddess herself.
Danica handed the lamp to Ilanit. “Such a sorrow, such a burden,” she murmured, and her voice was as clear as the breeze in the garden.
He fell into her embrace. Yes, the fragile scent of asphodel clung to her, comforting and soothing. He tried to speak, but his lips could only stammer. The lamp flickered into pennons of flame. Ilanit’s face shifted before him and became Danica’s, bone sculpted by years and wisdom, bottomless eyes seeing all, condemning nothing.
The women were easing him down onto a pallet beside the stand holding the queen’s armor, crested helmet, breastplate, shield. The shield was emblazoned by a many pointed star, a star humming with latent power. Andrion raised a trembling hand, touching the star, and he thought it thrilled for him. His hand fell heavily to the bed. Ilanit spread a coverlet over him, and Danica arranged the golden necklace, moon and star, at his throat, arranged the winged brooch on his shoulder. “Rest, my son. Here, for now, is your sanctuary.”
Her hair was two wings of smooth-spun electrum contained by a silver net; her eyes were green. Green eyes bent over him, the small imperial princeling—grave women called Sabazians rode into Iksandarun—the scent of asphodel and a star offered to his tiny hand. One day the shield passed from his mother’s arm to his sister’s, but the star always shone for him.
My sanctuary, he realized she had said, only for now.
A door opened, shut again. The eyes swam, circled, became three pairs, parted. One pair remained, emerald eyes bright with youth, with spirit, with an uncanny vision of more than this world. His breath sighed from his body, “Dana.”
“Sleep,” she said. She smiled, but her smile wavered at the corners. Her mouth brushed his forehead, leaving a trail of flame, leaving the fleeting images of her Sight: Iksandarun burning, smoke billowing upward and blotting a crimson moon, a crimson cloak spread carefully on a smoke-stained carpet . . .
The lips disappeared. Andrion slept, deeply, dreamlessly, in the glow of the star-shield of Sabazel.
* * * * *
Dana tucked the covers around Andrion’s body. He was thinner than when she had last seen him, his jaw and cheekbones more sharply defined, almost a stranger. A copper-colored beard did not soften his face; it was tight with worry. She stroked his brow, his cheek, until his features relaxed.
Such a burden, she thought; the weight of it hangs on him like a cloak. Darkness gathers around him. She touched him again, but some dim barrier separated them.
A cloak. She frowned, trying to seize the image, but it was gone.
Ilanit held the lamp high over the bed as Shandir mixed herbs into a cup of steaming water. “Wormwood for infection,” the healer said. “Valerian, willow, and almond milk to ease the fever of mind and body.”
Danica bent over Bellasteros. Her hand brushed the matted hair from his brow, tested the heat in his cheeks. He muttered something and twitched. His eyes opened, the pupils rolling wildly. “Danica . . .” Her name was an incantation.
“Marcos,” she returned. Something caught her voice and drew it taut. “So you come yet again to this bed. Even though it is no longer mine you come, drawn by the years of memories.”
Shandir touched Danica’s shoulder and they shared a glance. Only a glance, but the need for words between them had ended long before Bellasteros first came to Sabazel.
Dana stepped closer to the bed. The king was gray-haired and gray-faced, and the diadem of the Empire was gray on his brow. Gods, she thought with a pang of sorrow, he has aged twenty years. At the midwinter rites he and Andrion had played side by side in Ashtar’s games, and if Bellasteros had not been quite as lean and limber as his son, he had still been a vital presence, his teeth flashing with laughter in his handsome face. Now he was no longer a man in the prime of his middle years, but aged beyond measure.
With firm, delicate fingers Danica unwound the bandage. Bellasteros groaned, a cry of soul-deep agony; Danica blanched in response. The arm was swollen, the gaping wound festering yellowly, and streaks of red ran in evil tendrils up to the shoulder. His hand, his right hand, lay like the dried claw of a dead bird beside Solifrax. The serpent-skin scabbard reflected no light.
The fine hair rose on the back of Dana’s neck. Sorcery. A black mist hovered about the figure of the emperor, sucking at him; death, but no peace in death. A stench filled her throat, rancid butter and blood, and she gagged.
Ilanit thrust the lamp on Shandir and hurried to her daughter. “What do you see? What do you feel?”
“Evil magic,” Dana choked. She swallowed, and the taste, the vision faded. “It is more than the wound that pains him.”
“Yes,” Danica stated. “Bellasteros would never acquiesce so meekly to defeat; he once fought the gods themselves for his son, and won.” Her eye strayed to Andrion’s still form, lingered on it, moved back to the bed. “But I cannot fight such evil, for sorcery corrupts anyone it touches; I can only fight this wound, and that in but one way . . .” Her voice broke. Suddenly she, too, seemed old, ravaged by time, no longer the proud queen of man-hating Sabazel but a weary woman despairing of her man’s weakness.
The room was silent. A breeze plucked at the shutters, stirring the flame in the lamp. The fruit trees sighed. Shandir touched Danica on the hand and she straightened, setting her chin sternly. “I choose to be a healer, a warrior no longer. Therefore I must heal him. The juice of the poppy, Shandir.”
Shandir nodded, her plump face tight. She reached into her bag of herbs and shaved a few morsels of brown paste into the cup. Then she took a case that lay nearby and set out a row of obsidian-edged knives that glowed with a dark luster in the lamplight. Once, Dana thought, Bellasteros’s eyes had glowed like that.
Danica lifted the diadem from his head as she had once placed it upon him. She unbelted the sword from his side. She handed the symbols of his kingship to Ilanit, and Ilanit laid them carefully beside the sleeping heir.
Shandir placed a cloth-wrapped board beneath Bellasteros’s wounded arm. Danica tipped a drop of the infusion between his lips. He groaned again and swallowed. “Always trust you, my lady,” he whispered. The effort it cost him to speak sent a tremor through his body.
“Once you did not,” Danica said. “And once I did not trust you.” She lightly kissed his mouth. “Here, my lord, drink this.” And he took the drug from her hands.
Dana turned away. The door closed behind her, shutting away the scent of herbs, the glitter of knives. Shutting away oblivious Andrion. “Forgive me,” she murmured, but she knew not to whom she spoke.
Night had fallen over Sabazel. The garden was a shadowed tapestry sewn in shades of black and gray; even the scarlet anemones were the color of dried blood. Stars pricked the sky; cold, distant lamps. Dana hurried along familiar paths, up a flight of steps cut into the living rock of Cylandra, and burst out of breath into a hollow in the mountainside. She fell to her knees beside a large bronze basin of water.
Her breath stirred its dark surface. The starlight gathered itself and eddied through the water in slow sparkling spirals. “Ashtar,” she said softly. “Ashtar, spare me,”
But the goddess spoke only to the queen, through the pool and through the star-shield. The water was silent. Dana slumped against the cool bronze, her hands pressed to her ears as if blanking out some unwelcome sound, but the sights and sounds continued unabated in her mind: the heavy, gasping breath of the unconscious king, exhaling a low moan; the careful snick of knives and needles and a sudden, sickening crack of bone; Shandir removing one blood-soaked pad and placing another one; Danica’s still, white face, and eyes that glistened with tears she stubbornly refused to shed.
At last Dana raised her head. She heard a door open and shut; Ilanit, bearing a cloth-wrapped bundle to the temple fire, a pyre for the strength of the emperor. Andrion slept dreamlessly, so Dana would weep for him, for Danica, for them all, until he woke to the harsh light of day and wept himself.
The wind blew cold from Cylandra’s icy peak, murmuring a dirge over the city of Sabazel.
* * * * *
Ilanit sat slumped on a bench in the temple atrium, her elbows on her thighs and her head hanging. The brazier set beside the shallow pool emanated a thick coil of smoke that shaped itself into tangled limbs, into faceless wasted bodies, before dissipating through the opening in the roof and into the night. Doves shifted uneasily in the rafters, cooing soft complaints.
Ilanit’s nostrils flared at the smell, and yet she did not move. “This much I owe,” she said to herself. “Little enough for the man who secured Sabazel.”
A figure approached from the doorway, glanced into the brazier, recoiled. “By Ashtar’s blue eyes, Ilanit, this is an evil night.”
“In the dark of the moon,” the queen responded. “Come, sit by me, Lyris. Cheer me.”
“My words will not cheer you,” Lyris said. She stepped to the bench and with a clanking of her armor sat. She laid her javelin down and removed her helmet, shaking her hair free. Her face was thin and keen, etched with the memory of suffering and with the quest for certainty; her eyes, uncompromisingly steady, reflected the flames in twin points of fire.
“Well?” asked Ilanit after a moment.
Lyris blinked, freeing herself from the reflection. “You should not have allowed men into Sabazel. Men may only be allowed into Sabazel for the rites of the goddess at the solstices and the equinoxes.”
“Do not lecture me, Lyris. I know the law.”
“If the law is not obeyed, we shall pay for it.”
“If we do not show mercy, we shall pay for that.”
Lyris picked up the javelin and tapped its butt end against the floor. “The law was made to shield us when our very existence was threatened. Now that we have won peace and the respect of our neighbors, we grow soft and shall be undone. One breach, and then another, and Sabazel shall be lost.”
“Spoken with the zeal of the convert,” said Ilanit with a wry smile. “To think you were catechized with the litany of Harus when you were a girl in Sardis.”
“I forswore the falcon god after what his high priest Adrastes did to me. Raped and possessed by Gerlac’s demon spirit . . .” Lyris shivered, glancing quickly from side to side, as if even the name chilled her. The shadows stirred. “I was only sixteen, as you were, and Danica showed me mercy even when the demon forced me to attempt her life.”
“Mercy,” stated Ilanit, “to those who come here wounded.”
“But I am a woman!”
Ilanit’s brows shot up. “I am queen and you my weapons master!”
The javelin cracked against the floor, and Lyris looked away, teeth tight between her curled lips.
Ilanit slumped again. “Forgive me, my friend, my pair. This night drags my thoughts into some dark pit. I would not make light of your travail. To this day you will accept the touch of only one man. But your taste is impeccable, I must admit.” She cast a tentative look sideways at Lyris, offering peace.
Lyris let the javelin fall, flinging her anger after it. “I am pleased to receive Patros’s offering, when he comes to me scented with your body.” She chuckled. “You turn me cleverly from my purpose, Ilanit, reminding me of happier times.”
“I am not at all clever. If I were, I could remedy this trouble that has come upon us. Do you not think I fear our lawbreaking? This time I shall not gain a daughter. This time we shall draw the wrath of a new enemy upon our heads, and whether Ashtar will protect us, I know not. Her voice is silent, leaving me to choose.”
“But you will not choose to cast out Bellasteros and his son?”
“How can it be right to hate all men because some have hated us?” Ilanit glanced back at the brazier and the pitiful embers within. “No. Bellasteros might soon be leaving us for another realm; Andrion will find his own destiny. The Khazyari will not wait while we split hairs over our loyalties. We are bound to the Empire now.”
“Indeed.” Lyris growled. “Safe, but no longer free.” She set her hand upon Ilanit’s shoulder, drawing her gaze. They eyed each other, Lyris’s tensile strength testing the strength of Ilanit’s conviction. At last the weapons master bowed slightly. “Of course I shall do your bidding, my queen; I shall even understand why you bid it. But I cannot like it.”
“Neither can I, Lyris, neither can I.”
The flames in the brazier subsided to ash. A cold, clean wind blew the smoke away. The doves fell silent. Ilanit and Lyris leaned together, talking quietly in the half phrases of long acquaintance, and the night spun itself out.
* * * * *
“Andrion!”
He sensed the damp coolness of a summer’s morning. Birds sang riotously. No doubt Toth would have warm bread and cheese; his stomach felt as empty as an abandoned well.
“Andrion!”
No, it was a woman’s voice. This was Sabazel. What was her name, that warrior he had bedded last year? Or who had bedded him, rather, to his mingled chagrin and delight.
“Andrion!” Fingertips stroked his cheek. “My son, awake to me.”
His eyes opened. Danica’s face hovered over him. His mother’s face, drained of light and peace, cut by anguished sleeplessness into the furrows of age. But her eyes were calm and steady, doggedly guarding the depths of her soul. “Mother, what—”
Searing memory flooded him. Gods, he chided himself, can I think of nothing more than food or sex? “Mother, forgive me, I slept.” He scrambled up and staggered, his muscles knotting themselves. His father’s diadem lay on his pillow, beside the hollow where his head had rested; the sword Solifrax lay mute at his right hand. No, I cannot, he thought. I am not strong enough!
“You needed to sleep. Now your strength has returned.”
Had it? Andrion felt as wobbly as a newborn colt. He shook himself, organizing his limbs, and tried to smile at his mother. He was, strangely, taller than she. Had he grown, or had she stooped?
“Your father lives,” Danica said. “He is weak and tired, but he begins to break free of the oblivion of the poppy. We . . .” Abruptly she turned and braced herself on the edge of the table.
No, Andrion thought, you are strength itself, Danica the warrior queen, the shield borne beside the sword. He gazed past her to the bed. The hangings swayed gently in the breeze. Through them Bellasteros’s face was as pale as some ancient fresco faded by storm and time.
Andrion inhaled deeply, calming himself. He gave Danica his arm and together they walked to the bed as if the few steps were a long ceremonial passage. Something was wrong, he thought, something terribly awry. He reached out and jerked the hangings away.
Where Bellasteros’s right arm had been there was now only a stump. Carefully bandaged, well cleaned, but a stump. The hand that had lifted Solifrax from the grasp of the gods and with it won an empire, that hand was gone.
A rushing filled Andrion’s ears and brought the blood surging to his face. No, the emperor could not be a frail mortal. He must be strong and whole and sturdy to hold the hand of his son, guiding him, teaching him, laughing with him . . .
Andrion steadied himself. And what then should Danica have done? Let the wound rot and the fever drain Bellasteros inexorably of life? A shameful death for the conqueror. Better to live, and grow strong again, and win back his realm.
“Father,” Andrion said. His teeth were clenched so tightly his jaw ached.
Bellasteros’s eyes opened. Taupe eyes, drained of madness, containing only a resigned sorrow. “Andrion?” a voice whispered. “Andrion, you are my heir, take the diadem.” His eyes rolled upward, clouded, closed again. His face was spent almost to the skull.
No! Andrion realized he was trembling. “But this is Sabazel,” he protested.
“Yes,” said Danica. “What did you expect, my son?”
“Healing . . . healing and direction.” She did not answer. He turned, gazed full into her face. Her great green eyes, malachite mirrors, reflected the image of his own face. “Healing,” he persisted.
“Andrion,” Danica sighed, “I once carried you and the power of the goddess as well, but now I carry neither. You are my strength, and his, and the gods’ . . .” Her voice shattered, and she struggled not to weep. Whether at Bellasteros’s agony or at the passing of her own strength, Andrion could not tell. He did not want to know; he had never seen her cry.
He carefully set her upon the edge of the bed and kissed her brow. He tenderly drew the coverlet to Bellasteros’s gray-bearded chin and tucked it in. And he ran, bursting out of the small house, through the gleaming green and gold of the garden, up the steps to the hollow in the mountainside. “Gods! Gods!” he cried, but none answered.
Dana sat by the bronze basin. “I waited for you,” she said. “I knew you would come.”
He fell to his knees before her and bent his face onto her breast. Before his eyes the surface of the water stirred, sunlight glinting from its depths. Understanding rent his mind like the beak of a raven feeding upon the dead.
What did you expect? he asked himself brutally. What did you expect? An ending like a story told to a princeling tucked away safe in his palace, his patrimony secure? Or a beginning? He was empty, his youth cut away, cauterized and bound; he was full to bursting with the unutterable agony of its amputation. Sobs of grief wracked his body, inescapable.
Dana held him, her cheek against his hair. Her last tears, the dregs of her own grief, fell upon his head. The water in the basin swirled and splashed over the rim. He could not tell which drops were her tears and which the anointing touch of the goddess.