Byzantium's Crown Page 8

  An incantation he had learned when he was young trembled on his lips. It might have been made for just such a time when he wandered out of body into a realm of pure spirit in which he confronted the hawk that was his house's patron.

  "I have come before thee in truth," Marric told it. "I have not done evil to mankind, nor have I harmed animals, nor committed falsehood in the place of truth. I have not known evil, nor have I acted wickedly. I have not caused misery, or affliction, nor have I done what is abominable to God."

  He did not think he was dead, not yet. But he found the words painted on so many tombs the only fit way of explaining himself. He trembled, lest the hawk speak and call him a liar.

  The hawk turned and flew back the way it had come. One wing dipped, and Marric obeyed its silent command to follow.

  "May the shining ones who live upon fight and truth, without deceit, who abominate wickedness, destroy my evil. Blot ye out my offenses. May they destroy all evil belonging to me. Grant that I may enter these halls—"

  With a flap of its wings the hawk sped on ahead to hover above the heads of those who now faced him. Marric fell silent, awed.

  Before him stood two pillars that towered upward forever without a visible base or capital. Light splintered between them, then solidified into two forms: a man, his body bound in grave bands, and a woman who wore the moon's disk on her shining brow. In her hands she held an opalescent bowl. To the left and fight of the figures gleamed a shadowy court, lights in colors Marric had never before seen glowing above their heads, reflected in the white radiance of the pair enthroned between the pillars.

  As he had never imagined he would do, Marric prostrated himself before them.

  "Rise."

  It was blasphemous to stand in that pair's presence. But it was worse blasphemy to disobey them. Marric visualized his spirit-form standing upright and found himself again on his feet. That voice! He gazed at the man. The man's eyes were as infinitely wise as the hawk's but far more compassionate, sad with knowledge and with loss. Beneath that unremitting gaze Marric knew himself understood, forgiven, and well-beloved, now and forever.

  "Father?'

  "My true son." Only the fact that the man wore the mummy's wrappings prevented him from reaching out to embrace Marric.

  "You are so weary," said the woman, and she had his mother's voice.

  "So foolish, are you not, to grieve at what is only a short parting," said the mother. "And you have so much to do, so much to learn." Her voice rebuked but did not blame him. That had always been Antonia's way.

  "It is as I was told," the man said. "He is no adept. Still, even without being fully aware, he seeks."

  Light blossomed over Marric's head. Surely he must say something to this pair. But what would not sound pitifully inadequate?

  "What would you ask of us, son?"

  Peace. Release. Your blessing. Marric could have asked for any of them. Instead words from the rituals burst from him. "May I renew myself, may I become strong. Grant that I may come forth and that I may obtain power."

  The eyes of the man and woman studied him, then softened into such love that Marric shook from its intensity. He felt himself slipping from their presence and could have wept at the bereavement, save that he knew how necessary it was . . . for now. Again he was driving the winged chariot. This time he felt rushing wind, speed, vertigo, as the horses plunged back from the place on the horizon toward the world. He tried to remember his exaltation, his sense of calm power. The dark horse reared, attempting to take the chariot on a mad dash through the tranquil night sky. He was Marric. He was master. The magic would not hurt him. He sought to believe this as he restrained the horse. He had all but mastered it when something homed and hideous leapt up from beneath its hooves. The horse screamed and bolted. Marric hid his eyes. The thing had had his face.

  He cried out and felt himself tossed from the chariot. Then he was falling, falling . . . a voice was hailing him back to a world of pain and the body he had abandoned.

  He lay on his belly, the scratchiness of blanket and pallet protecting him from the dried mud of the floor. The pair who were mother and father to him—they were gone. And the beast with his face guarded their threshold. Loss gnawed at him, and he sobbed.

  The voice that had called Marric from the horizon was chanting over him now. He felt his entire body tingle. His hands, propping his chin, seemed to glow. Then the chanting stopped.

  "Rest. You have wandered all night."

  Marric tried to rise, to rash into the departing night to seek that place once more. A fragile hand forced him down, then lifted a wet cloth from his back. The touch felt as if crocodiles of fire gnawed him. He wept, biting his arm for a more manageable pain lest he shame himself by screaming. Perhaps the numbness would return, and he could escape. This time he would not come back.

  New fire lashed across his back. One of those hands that tended him, slender and very sure, had touched him shrewdly, restoring his awareness of his own body.

  "Afraid to die, yet unwilling to live. Is that it? Awake, coward, and take up your life once again."

  Coward? Rage flowed through him, uniting his body and spirit once more.

  "You call me coward? Had I my strength, I would kill you for saying that."

  "Do you think I have not wished for death?" the voice answered. "Every time I was sold, or taken again, I prayed for it. If the gods will it, you may yet be my death." That was the maidservant's voice, wasn't it? What was her name? Stephana. Why would Nicephorus' friend taunt him?

  "Mor is no coward," Nico said.

  "Not if he can fight. But you forget, Nico." Stephana's voice was cool. "Cowardice is what I know about. My life is a misery because I was a coward in my last. The more shame to me! Doubtless this man will stray on the path, but as I have strength and will to help him, he will not die a coward."

  "Will he die?"

  "Not now," said the third voice, the accented one. The man walked toward Marric and he saw a gray robe.

  "Taran?"

  "Remember, Mor, you saw a druid within the villa? Taran is my teacher and my friend. Trust him. And brother, stay with us."

  "You must get hold of me, and take care that I do not run away from you."

  "If you can quote Plato, you're not dying," Nicephorus said. His tired face lit, and relief quavered in his voice. He shifted positions, irresolute.

  "If you have duties, Nico, you should return to them before we are both missed."

  "Leaving you unprotected?"

  Stephana laughed. "Taran and I have this place warded. And in any case, Strymon has locked Sutekh up until his hot head cools. But even if Sutekh were a-prowl for me, I would stay here. I am not afraid now." Her voice held an exultation Marric could not fathom.

  "Then I rejoice for you." Nicephorus bent over and touched Marric's hand. "Rest, Mor."

  He and the druid left. Marric turned his head and looked at the woman whose reproof had shamed him into taking up his life again. Her silvered hair, escaping from its thick coils, drifted around her face. From time to time she brushed it with delicate, thin-fingered hands too work-worn for beauty. Now her eyes were almost the same blue as the shadows of strain and doubt that the fight to keep life within Marric had hallowed out.

  Biting his lips against pain, he reached out to touch her hand.

  "I did not mean that I would kill you. I regret my harsh words, lady." Marric used the words and tones with which he might have addressed a woman of the palace.

  "Lady?" Stephana laughed, a rippling music that drifted like a breeze upon Marric's forehead. "I invited your anger, Mor, to draw you back to life."

  "I would not wish to be angry at you, lady." He brought the words out carefully.

  "Stephana, please. Not lady. I am but a seamstress, a broidress, a dresser of hair—"

  "And a healer, a mistress of power. My friend calls you an adept."

  Gentle fingers pressed against his lips.

  "Both you and Nico talk too much.
" Marric kissed her fingers. They trembled, then jerked away as if his lips were hot coals. There was near panic in her eyes that did not accord with her earlier words. But she regained her former calm quickly and relegated Marric to the role of the invalid.

  "You are feverish. Last night you almost died. Now drink this and sleep."

  She gave him a potion heavy with syrup of poppies. Where had she gotten that to lavish it upon a slave? Marric gulped it until it was gone. He was desperately thirsty. He murmured thanks up at the tired face within its halo of soft hair.

  "I am here, Mor, if you need me."

  As Stephana took the cup from him, the light fell on her and turned her into a creature all white and shining. Marric tried to tell her how she looked, but the effort was beyond him.

  Stephana laid a hand on his head. He imagined he felt strength flow into him from her fingers. The last women to touch him had been Alexa and Irene, both angry, both abusing powers they could not control and should never have summoned. Stephana was so different. Her touch healed and blessed him.

  Chapter Eight

  Beyond the wall of Marric's shed, horses stamped and whinnied. Slaves brought them fodder, forked through their stalls, and curried them. Marric's labor gang would have been at work since dawn. But the light slanting across the floor showed that the morning was already well advanced. Marric tried to raise himself and stifled a gasp at the pain that jolted across his back.

  Strymon had had him brought here to die. But his friends had helped him back to life. Now his task was simple: heal and wait. Marric took comfort from his remembered vision of the pair. They had all but told him he had something worth waiting for.

  Carefully Marric settled back on his belly. If Taran had defended this shed, he was safe enough. A druid's prophecy had brought him here. Magic had kept him alive and consoled him. It was not the druid's fault—or Nico's, or Stephana's—that he himself was not fit to be trusted with it. Marric sighed and rested his cheek on his arm where blue marks still showed where he had bitten his own flesh to keep from crying.

  Whatever salves Taran and Stephana had used on his lacerated back seemed to work. He hurt, but was no longer devoured by agony.

  Had they fed the Gepid to the crocodiles, after all? Marric wondered, and shuddered. And Sutekh himself: had Strymon punished him, or would the overseer still swagger about brandishing that whip of his? There would come a day of reckoning, Marric promised himself that.

  The warped door creaked open as a boy edged in with a tray. Nicephorus followed. Before kneeling beside Marric, he closed his eyes, gestured at something, and muttered. Closing the wards?

  "How does my back look?" Marric asked.

  "Like raw meat, if you must know. But it will heal cleanly. Stephana says you are to eat all of this. No, don't move!" The boy brought the tray nearer, and Nicephorus raised Marric's head.

  All that day Marric drifted in and out of sleep. Around dusk the door opened, startling him. A flash of white skirt told him that his new visitor was Stephana. Marric smiled up at her.

  "Mor? Wake and drink."

  Though he was still half-asleep, he drank. When he had finished, she washed his face. Her touch was cool and deft. The broth had smelled better than it had tasted, but he had forced himself to drink all of it, lest Stephana call him a coward for refusing the food that would help him heal.

  Now she opened the phials she had brought. The clean fragrances of nard and valerian filled the room. "I must work these into your back," she warned him. "You know you must not struggle, or the wounds will reopen."

  Marric braced himself. As she anointed his back, Stephana talked to distract him.

  "Nicephorus has been busy today," she said. "This morning he took your story to Lady Heptephras. While she was still weeping, he asked if I might tend you." Stephana laughed, telling him that she would have nursed him in any case. "The Gepid has been sold. Strymon was all for selling Sutekh too, but . . . then he considered how efficient he is. It is a shame." Her voice quavered for so brief an instant that Marric thought he had imagined it. "When you recover, you will not return to that barracks. You are to work inside—light work until your strength fully returns. Perhaps, as a door guard—"

  Marric chuckled. So he was to be promoted, was he? Stephana hushed him with a touch, then continued. "Mor, you must avoid Sutekh. As long as you stay within the house, he cannot harm you. But if you go outside . . . "

  Marric yawned. I wish that Sutekh were crocodiles' meat, he thought contentedly, and slept.

  As Marric's fever abated and his strength returned, he began to wonder when his inexorable nurses would ever let him stand and move around. They were being overly indulgent. If this were Cherson's frontier, he would have had to fight in this condition. His allies the Kutrigur Huns rode with worse wounds and counted them of little importance.

  Marric lay listening to the shaduf laboring to pump water into the fields from the canals. This year the floods had come late and not risen as they should have.

  Running feet approached. The door slammed open. Marric leapt into a defensive crouch, the blanket that was his only covering falling down along his hips. The gouges on his back and sides ached, but no trickle of warm blood told him that the scabs had broken open.

  Stephana stood with her back to the door. She was breathing hard, and her face was distraught. She clutched her medicines to her breast with both hands.

  "I won't be afraid. "I'm not . . . I'm not!" Her voice trembled on the knife edge of hysteria. Three times she attempted to reset the wards, then dropped her hands in despair.

  "Only fools never fear," said Marric. "What happened, Stephana?" She sank on her knees and he reached out to her.

  "You're trembling," he said. "Here, before you drop those jars, give them to me." He pried the unguents out of her fingers.

  Stephana's eyes were wild with fear and with a remembered revulsion. One hand inched upward to her mouth; Marric caught the other one. When she jerked away, he began to understand.

  Her light garment fell from one shoulder to her waist, exposing flesh reddened and scratched from breast to throat, as if someone had tried to tear her clothes from her and had clutched her breast so hard he left finger marks on her skin.

  "Who hurt you?" Marric asked in a soft growl. From the way she held her head low and shook it—did she fear for him? Or was she ashamed? Only Sutekh the overseer would be rash enough to lay violent hands on the mistress' favorite maid.

  "How else did he harm you?" Marric made his voice gentle.

  "He . . . no, not this time. This time I got away." Stephana's voice was dull with humiliation. She brought up her hand to rub the scratches on her body.

  Marric reached for the ointments. "Come here, Stephana. We'll use some of these on you." As he inched closer, he sensed that she feared nearness to him, and bent to draw his blanket over his loins.

  "You helped me. Let me help you," he urged. He unstoppered a glass tube with one hand. With the other he pried gently but relentlessly at her fingers.

  Why had her magic not spared her this? Anger blazed up in him, and Stephana winced and backed away, moaning at her own helplessness.

  Though she had fought Sutekh bravely, now, as reaction to the struggle set in, she had no more fight left in her. Marric laid his arm around her shoulders. He only wanted to draw her close and comfort her before he tended her scratches, but she went rigid.

  "Steady now," he murmured. "You saved my life. Do you really think I would try to rape you."

  What was it about this woman that tore so at his heart? An invisible cord seemed to draw them together. The sight of her panic, her fear of him and of his touch, made him ache. What a terrible life for a gentle woman: most nights a different master or strangers, and most of them brutal. "I'm not afraid," she had declared so proudly. But she did fear now, and Marric wanted to help her.

  He laid a hand on her shoulder again and tipped her face up with his other hand. "I am going to smear some of this balm on those sc
ratches," he said.

  "I don't need it."

  He shook his head at her.

  "Enough talk on the subject. This way I will not worry that you go untended. Come closer." Marric remembered what an old army surgeon had once told him: better tend a wagonload of wounded men than one battered woman.

  "Look, you can put your hand on top of mine if you don't trust me . . . and to make sure I do this right," he added. "Come, Stephana. Who is being the coward now?

  She let her head droop. Marric reached for linen, wet it, and began delicately to dab her shoulder near her throat. Nails had bit into her flesh and raked downward. As Marric worked, Stephana's unsteady breathing, still too much like sobs, fanned his temple. He thought he would more quickly forgive the overseer for his own beating than for abusing Stephana. Damn the man, he had enjoyed it. Now for the nard. Marric took a generous fingerful and began to work it in. Stephana's skin was very soft. It warmed as the salve sank in. Though her hand hovered protectively close to his own, she relaxed somewhat.

  But Marric's injuries were healing, and his body let him know it. Rose scent clung to Stephana's hair, and made him dizzy. His breath grew more rapid. He tried to keep the motion of his fingers, smoothing down her shoulder to her breast, steady as he worked in the ointment. He tried to think he was dressing the wounds of, say, a common soldier. But the contact was too intimate. Accidentally, his finger brushed her nipple, and it hardened. For a heartbeat, they both held motionless.

  Stephana gasped. Her hand closed over his and pushed it away. It would be dishonest to ask, Have I hurt you? just so he could replace his hand and caress her. For this time his touch would be a caress, not an expression of concern. Even as Marric wondered how she would feel in his arms, he realized that he would never force the slightest touch on her. How could he destroy any faint trust she might hold for him? But Isis, Isis, he wanted her.

  Very slowly and very carefully, he moved away.

  "Knot up your gown," he said, and turned to the food she had brought him. He was very hungry.