Empire of the Eagle

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."

That surprised him. She had always been profoundly reserved before the others. Pleased, though, he held out his hand for hers. She touched it and made a small, happy sound in her throat. And he saw what she did: the dome of light cast by the Eagle, even with sun and moon gone from the sky.

"It will not hide us forever," she murmured. "But it will serve for now."

Behind them came the noise of a camp, of soldiers settling, some to sleep, some to guard. He should return, should allow them to see that he was still alert.

"Let them all rest," Draupadi said. "Your minds and gods can do very little against what we face. We have come far and fast, and we need rest."

At that moment, the desert floor looked as comfortable as a silken rug—to sink down upon it, to sink into it as into a bath of deep water.... He jolted himself back to full awareness. Then he knelt and thrust his hand down into the grit. Rock, dust, powder, sand—not water at all…

He let the powder pour from his hand.

"They wish to return this world to what it was," Draupadi mused. "Even now, because you are weary, they make these little tests." She sighed. "Guard yourself. The tests will worsen before we face them in truth."

Her gaze went to the Eagle, its bronze eyes staring out fiercely over their heads. "It is time now for our weapon to be our shield."

Quintus felt himself falling sideways. Draupadi sank down beside him, and let him pillow his head upon her knees. Sleep covered him like a saffron veil.