Winter King Read online

  Again Toth made the sign against the evil eye. He trotted away quickly, into the depths of the encampment. The humps of the yurts stretched to the heat-shimmering horizon like a crop tilled from the soil of Iksandarun, watered with blood. Ravens whirled overhead, rending the sky with their cries, and the howling of jackals echoed down the wind.

  Chapter Five

  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 D
ana 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.”