"You do not think it was overwhelmed?" she asked as calmly as if discussing a journey made a day ago, a month ago, and not the great expanse of time that, surely, was the truth. "It was so small, but it possessed that peak with a tabernacle...." She-broke off and stared at Ssu-ma Chad.
"There is a story," the Ch'in officer said, "of a fountain of pure water, a shrine in the depths of the waste, found only by people in the most desperate need—and sometimes not even then. I heard the story from a dying man, the last survivor of a caravan. A patrol had turned him up. We took him up and tried to save him, but he died at noon, raving as we thought. Raving," the Ch'in officer added thoughtfully. "We are already off our reckoning."
"Fare forward," Quintus found himself muttering. Arjuna's thought had become his.
"Forward?" Lucilius snapped. "Which way is forward? Can you even tell?" Rufus glared. If Lucilius hadn't been patrician, he would have had a blow for the interruption. It was death to strike an officer. Considering the case they were in, that could hardly make a difference; but it did, for Rufus.
"You'd dare, would you?" Lucilius snarled at the centurion, whose control did not extend to his eyes.
"We must move in any case," Draupadi said. "Better for us to find them than for them to find us at a time of their choosing."
A scream rose from behind them, and they jumped from the shock. One of the soldiers who had collapsed and had lain head down on a camel for the journey yammered in terror, then screamed again, this time in mortal agony. His back arched, and his entire body convulsed until the ropes binding him to the pack- animal broke asunder. Before he fell face down, they could see that his face had swollen and turned dark as if he had been strangled.
"Snakes!" screamed a Roman, looking down as if a veritable legion of serpents had attacked. The hiss and scrape of grit in the desert intensified until even Rufus looked uneasy. If you were exhausted or half-mad—and if someone suggested it to you—perhaps you would mistake it for the sound of immense coils, dragging along the desert floor, waiting, preparing to—
Draupadi flung out a hand and chanted. The hissing subsided.
"I distrust things when they're that easy," Rufus observed.
"Your man was mad already. Being mad, he could be worked on to believe, and his belief killed him. I have removed the illusion for now, but I warn you: When you are weariest and weakest, they will strike again."
"So we have to move," Rufus said. "Sir?" He turned to Quintus for orders.
Lucky Rufus, who could unload the burden of leadership on officers who didn't want it either. Ganesha met Quintus's eyes. Either resign authority or be worthy of it and, perhaps, save all of their lives.
But Ganesha was more fit by far to lead!
It is not our world, not our time, he recalled Ganesha's words. After seeing the means the Black Naacals would use to achieve dominion, Quintus knew that Ganesha feared what he might do if he himself seized great power: Perhaps he would be a benevolent tyrant, but, ultimately, a tyrant nonetheless. It would be hard to go against a beloved tyrant, but Quintus would have to, being Roman. Or, if not he, other Romans.
"Draupadi!" Ganesha snapped, a guard alerting other warriors.
She chanted once more, as the bronze talisman Quintus bore heated. Another of the men who had collapsed during the flight after the earthquake screamed and began to writhe. This one gasped, his face purpling, and Quintus heard the crack and snap as his bones broke.
Draupadi ran to him, as he writhed and twisted, moaning weakly. She stretched out her hands, laid them on the air above the man's chest, and began to tug. Her voice rose strongly. The soldier slumped back, blood dripping from his mouth. It might be that his death was a mercy.
Draupadi's arms stiffened as if she fought to hold off fangs and the coils of an immense, unseen body that sought now to crush her.
"Do you see anything?" Ganesha demanded of Quintus.
He tightened his hand upon the Eagle. Was that a ghost of scales, of green and bronze that he saw? He had heard travelers' tales of serpents so vast that they could -swallow cattle—and Draupadi was so much smaller.
Quintus drew his sword and hacked at the shadow. The blade snapped. Draupadi reeled and fell, as if she had been tossed aside. Then it was the Roman's turn to gasp and fight off encircling coils of an astonishing strength, rising up his legs so he couldn't move the few steps necessary to grasp the Eagle, and rising, always rising. He heard Draupadi's voice rise, chanting again, rising almost to a shriek.
I must help her, Quintus thought, but he lacked the breath to tell her he was coming. If he could get to the Eagle, he would have a weapon better than any sword, but he had laid it aside.
His ribs felt as if lead weights were laid about them. He could see Draupadi's face, but it was growing smaller and fainter as if he saw it through a mist of blood.... He started to fall but was upheld by the very thing that was attacking him.
Draupadi stepped forward, a tiny knife in her hand. A stab at the serpent's "middle" and the pain in his chest eased. The creature seemed to fall as if poisoned, and Quintus had hard work not to collapse, too.
Dust swirled up from the desert floor, as if some immense creature lashed it up with its tail in its death throes.
Fire seemed to burn in Quintus's chest. The talisman's heat subsided; now the fire was his fight to draw in enough air so he could breathe without gasping.
They would send more serpents, Quintus knew. Sooner or later, everyone would see them, and Draupadi could not fight them all off.
He forced himself to move, then doubled over, almost retching from the pain as if he had run a race and must now collapse. Chairete, nikomen, he remembered after Marathon. Rejoice, we have conquered, said the runner. And collapsed and died. You can't die yet. You haven't conquered, he admonished himself. No Lethe for you.
Ganesha's eyes begged him. Choose. Choose now. He could see the old man fighting his own battle—to urge rather than to coerce. Perhaps that was a battle he knew. Perhaps he had seen the Black Naacals fight it and lose it too.
Perhaps that was even how it started, a desire to do good, to protect, to lead—and then the desire grew to overpower all opposition, even to the wrecking of the world.
Ganesha was an ally. Quintus must aid him, just as he had aided Draupadi.
They were out of their reckoning? Well, Ssu-ma Chao's fountain of pure water was as good a goal in this world of illusion as any.
"We ride!" he ordered. He didn't see who came up to lead—or carry—him to his horse because his eyes were fixed on Lucilius. Once again, the patrician had started toward the Eagle.
"No need to trouble yourself with that," Quintus rasped at Lucilius. "Get me over there," he ordered his bearer. He picked up the Eagle before the other man could try.
Quintus's horse screamed and plunged. Desert-bred as they were, even they had a horror of serpents. Did this one sense the illusion serpents? It must be so. A wind began to rise, stirring the sand and grit into swirls that looked like more coils—best not think like that, lest exhaustion and fear and memory of the serpent's coils cause them to manifest once more. Venomous or not, those coils were deadly.
Rufus had bent over, was sprinkling dust over the faces of the two men who had died. Draupadi mounted, chanting as she moved.
"Mount up and take her reins!" Quintus shouted at Rufus. She would need both hands for her work.
"Forward!" he shouted. He had not meant to gesture with the standard as if it were a sword—it had been Arjuna's blade, but that had snapped. However, the Eagle felt right in his hands, like a sweetly balanced weapon. Once again, light flared from the proudly held bird's head into a crown of glory, lighting sky and ground alike.
Once more he heard hissing, this time in front of them. If they turned to flee, he would wager all that the serpents' hiss would sound again.
Gods help us, he thought. The image of dancing Krishna seemed to stir against his chest.
Again, Quintus raised the Eagle. As the ligh
t struck the ground ahead of him and the wind blew, a figure gleaming like the Eagle seemed to gather itself up from the desert floor and leap to its feet. It moved forward, dancing as it went; light gleamed off its raised hands, as if it held torches.
Light from Eagle and dancer intensified until they filled Quintus's consciousness. Tears ran down his face, and he had to look aside. Tears were a waste; he would need that moisture as they rode deeper into the desert.
When the brightness subsided enough to allow him and the others to open their eyes, sand and sky were as they always had been. They stood in a basin in the greater depression. It was only a waste now, not the' abode of monsters. It was a marvel to stand thus and look about the cloudless sky, realizing that what looked like clouds were actually far-off mountains to the north and east: a marvel indeed to have north and east again.
Confidence touched Quintus, as it had every time the Eagle manifested its power. No doubt they might cut across a caravan route and reach a town before they consumed the last of their supplies.
They might well, indeed. But instead of counting on that, he turned his mount's head and guided his people deeper into the waste, following a dancing figure that flickered and gleamed ahead of him like sparks from a fire at harvest time.
The sparks brightened and spread out, solidifying into a track of light upon the eternal drabness of the desert. On and on it stretched, inviting them to travel along it.
Some of the men turned away. One screamed, then fell, lying with his face against the grit.
"We have a path," Quintus said. Try not to hurt at this most recent death, he told himself. He held aloft the Eagle as he would hold a torch up as he entered a cave. The signum's brightness gleamed as if it were molten metal, a beacon not just of power, of the might, of the Senate and the Roman people, but a sign or a promise that here at least, in the wild where madness stalked behind the noonday sun, the Eagle's wings spread out over all who cared to shelter beneath them.
It might not protect them: Romans and Ch'in alike, they were soldiers who must go where they were ordered and, perhaps, die there.
But this was a chance; and more than that, it was uniquely theirs, a memory of governance, land, and homes that existed, even if they never saw them again. Judging by the light in Ssu-ma Chao's eyes, Quintus thought that the Eagle—or as he called it, the Phoenix, meant much the same for him: authority, guidance, loyalty—his ancestors themselves, looking down on him and nodding approval.
Quintus led the Romans and the Ch'in out onto the blazing track.
25
UP AHEAD, THE dancing figure flung up its torches. They blazed brightly as they rose, then exploded into even greater radiance.
"But if that light goes out..." came a whisper, followed by the crack of the vinestaff. You followed where you were led. If you were led well, you lived, you received land and a mule, and you retired to enjoy them. If not, you died. But always, you obeyed.
None of them, Quintus knew, had reason to understand this enemy. What had they thought of? Death in battle or even by thirst were things they understood: not this. But they followed him.
Why do you tarry? the tiny figure seemed to ask as it danced. After so long lost, with such a path ahead of them, they might have been riding or marching down a Roman road toward a fate that, for the first time since he was a boy, he was convinced held glory.
He grinned at Ganesha. "Fare forward, just as he told me last time."
"I remember," said the magician. "But fare faster." Ganesha knew. He remembered and had chronicled how Arjuna had ridden out in his chariot, riding behind Krishna to a battle that would shake the foundations of the world. He had his usual weapons—and he had Pasupata, the ultimate weapon for which he had searched the waste. He, too.
There was no question of it now, Quintus thought, exulting. Faster and faster they traveled, and the ming sha, the singing sand, rose up to obscure their passage as if they marched into a place of turned up sand and light where their enemies might not harm them.
The sun sank and set, yet the light persisted. It was too good to lose: Tired though they were, they plodded on. Those who were mounted, marched; those who had marched, rode, resting as they might. There would be time to cease, to camp when the light faded. The hot wind blew. Quintus was very happy.
As the hours passed, the moon rose, climbing high overhead.
Beneath the beacon of the moon, the Eagle glowed not like bronze but the electrum of Egypt. Under that dome cast by its light, Quintus saw the desert transformed— softened by the light and by the ming sha itself, as if a veil rested gently over its worst aspects, hinting at the beauty that had once been in this place.
It had all been sea, Ganesha said: easy now to look at the slopes of the dunes and see the waves that had not glittered under the stars since their patterns had changed.
He turned, craning his head to see those he led. Ganesha rode as if in a happy dream. He might have been hastening not toward a battle but a reunion with what he loved best. Draupadi rode veiled once more, more wary than Ganesha, perhaps. But even as he looked, she cast off the veil from head and shoulders. The light touched her, erasing fears and weariness; and the sight of her took Quintus's breath away.
The figure who rode there—that was not his Draupadi, as he thought of her: a warmth of saffron and sandal-wood, her dark hair flowing down her upright back like hot oil. This woman's face was silver, cooling the beauty of feature into a type of antique mask of the sort he had seen lining the Via Appia, smiling through closed lips like his talisman.
Not Draupadi, he thought, but Diana of the Three Ways, the huntress keen on a trail that would bring her to her quarry, or Selene, overlooking the night land. Or even—and this thought made him shiver—the dark goddess at the crossroads, now manifesting herself in a priestess fully capable of mediating between heaven and Hades.
She was, Quintus recalled, a mistress of illusion; but he saw her as a face of the power she revealed. And as the others rode at her heels, he saw them too, not illusion but truth as the light distilled it from the flesh: the stubborn loyalty of the eldest of them; the strength of Ssu-ma Chao, loyalty unlooked for; even the shiftiness, the fox-like cunning of Lucilius was transformed into a kind of beauty.
Would they be eager to go up against whatever fastness the Black Naacals had taken for their own? In this light, and with the Eagle gleaming beneath the moon, he thought they could do anything. Judging from the rate at which they traveled, the way they held up their heads, so did they. It was so simple, he thought. One simply...
...The light flickered... a veiling of sand or cloud— after months it was odd to think of clouds that were not a desert tempest or the eternal snows of far-off mountains. What was that? An instant ago, he had known with an assurance greater than any he had ever enjoyed before, precisely what to do. The Eagle's staff warmed in his hand. Had he forgotten? It had not, the warning seemed to convey.
Fare forward.
He did. Then another wind blew, casting a pall of sand between the Eagle and the moon. The standard's brightness faded, then blazed up again. The moon was lower in the sky now, slipping toward its rest. Its light diminished, then was extinguished.
Ahead of them, the dancing figure seemed to pause, drawing light about it as a lamp flares up with the last drops of oil. Then that light too was quenched.
They were left standing in the bare desert. The keen, chill night wind wreathed them and cooled their faces. Then that, too, subsided.
After silver, lead. A weariness seized Quintus's limbs. He had time enough to signal a halt and sink the standard of the Eagle deep into the ever-present grit, securing it so whatever protection it might afford would lie over the camp they would now, in the dark of the moon, permit themselves to build. After such a passage, it was time for them to sleep.
Rufus's voice came to the tribune's ears. Not the usual assured bellow—but hoarse, hollow with exhaustion and even a sort of awe.
How far had they come—and what
had they reached? They were beyond all reckoning. And they were tired beyond all measure. He yawned hugely. A little longer, and he would be able to sink down and sleep where he fell. Improper: They were Romans. But beneath the Eagle...
"To the crows with it," he muttered, and let his legs collapse beneath him.
Draupadi passed by, drifting in her tattered robes. Past him. Past the Eagle. None of the drunken staggering of deep exhaustion for her, but her usual grace.
"Do you know where we are?" he whispered.
Had he lost her to the illusions he had seen? Doubt chilled him more than the wind: He was tired; he must sleep. Sleep brought dreams; dreams were fancies, wafted into his thoughts through the gates of ivory. The gates of illusion.
Draupadi gazed out over the sand.
"Closer to where we need to be," she murmured. "Give me your hand."