Empire of the Eagle

32

Time and place shifted once more. Amber light, tiny flames flickering in brass bowls floating in a pool, the splash of falling waters turning their light into a dancing shimmer, and, gleaming in the light, Draupadi, reclining on cushions the way Quintus had first seen her.

They had given her a new gown of the clinging saffron cotton she favored. Her long hair had been combed out and gleamed on her shoulders, and her face appeared washed clean of the exhaustion and fear graven in it by month upon month of hardship. A ruby line marked the part of her hair and a bloody hand ornament dangled between dark eyebrows. Her eyes had been elongated by some cosmetic, and there was absolutely no recognition in them.

And no way to reach the enemy or the Eagle except to pass by her.

The fires' glow shifted, to create on the stone floor the illusion of a pool. It was all illusion, Quintus thought, cast by a woman lost within her own creation.

She had been wary, the first time they had met. And Ganesha had challenged him to a deadly game. How had he ever dared to play? Well, this was the final round.

Quintus gestured, and some of the men fanned out. He himself must be the one to approach her, and they would have to guard him. He forced himself to stare beyond Draupadi: He saw no archers, but that did not mean that the Black Naacals did not have such posted. He would just have to risk it: There was no way to the inmost part of the shrine but to pass Draupadi.

"Guard me," he whispered and started forward.

Quintus's first impulse was to go around the water. What water? he reminded himself. They had drugged her, he knew. But drugs could wear off. He only hoped that, to protect Ganesha, she had not consented in some fastness of her being, to serve as guard: If so, she too had been lied to, for Ganesha lay bound as a sacrifice upon the altar.

Remember—illusion, he told himself. Gesturing to the force at his back to stay behind, he strode out, setting foot onto the shimmering area that looked so like water. A corner of his mind expected to sink, but his boots scraped on rock until he reached the carpets on which Draupadi reclined.

She held out a hand to him. Once before, she had held out a hand thus, seeking to delude him—but that had been not Draupadi, but a simulacrum. The real woman had intervened to protect him.

As he had before, Quintus grasped the outstretched hand. The skin pressed by his callused hand had been smoothed with oil, and it smelled faintly of sandalwood. The nails were shaped and gleaming, the fingers henna-tipped. And none of that was right. Draupadi's hand was shapely, true enough, but callused nearly as much as his own from helping with the pack animals, roughened by grit-filled water, burnt from when she cooked over a dung fire. And the ring that he had given her was gone.

But he took that decorative, deceitful hand and drew Draupadi gently to her feet, holding her close against him. "I've come to take you out of here," he said.

"There is only here," she said. She shook her head, and her dark hair poured loose over those slender shoulders. He remembered the feel of that flow of hair in his hands. "Look about you," she told him and smiled.

Lights. Water. As he watched, the light shifted, and now he stood on a spit of land he remembered well. So often in his childhood, he had used this place for a retreat. From it you could see the entire valley. Now Draupadi had found it to share with him forever.

Her eyes fixed on his, and, he could find no other word for it, drew him in. Her hands went to his chest, his shoulders, seeking to pull him down to rest on the carpets. The smell of her hair and flesh made him giddy. Sit and talk, he thought. What harm ... talk? He doubted it. Never had they lain together. This might be their last chance. She would cast a veil of darkness over them, and together they would dream their last dream: that they were alone together.

But it would all be a lie. The Black Naacals would stand witness and be ready to expose them to what remained of Quintus's legions: a last betrayal as their officer abandoned them to lie in the arms of the woman who had bespelled them.

"It is time to go, Draupadi," he said gently. She shook her head.

"We will get Ganesha and we will go." The dark eyes flashed. Fear began to flicker in their depths, fear for her teacher? Then part of her was awake, part of her was fighting the influence of the drug.

"You have wandered far, Draupadi." He could make a song of her name to lure her back. "Too far. Now, come back!"

He put a snap in his voice, hoping to shock her awake.

"Why should we leave?" she asked, still drowsy. "Here is quiet. Here is peace. Here is all we shall ever need."

"Here is death," Quintus said. "Have you forgotten? You are in the keeping of the Black Naacals, and so is the Eagle. If they learn to use it, they will let the seas flow out to cover half the earth, then rule over the other half. Do you remember the time before, when that happened? Do you remember?"

She shook her head, fearful and reluctant.

"Draupadi, you remember. I know you do." He turned her face up forcibly to meet his eye to eye. "Do you want it to happen again?"

"No ... oh no..." Tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Then you must come with me."

She was faltering, weakening. He began to pull her toward the "water" that lay beyond her carpets.

The gong and horns rang out. Just let him get her back, and the Dark Ones could raise all the alarms they cared to. Almost, they drowned out a death shriek. Not Ganesha, please all the gods. Rufus, make them hold the line.

As if the man's death fueled the illusions that the Black Naacals wanted Draupadi to cast, the images became stronger, fragmenting into a confusion of light, sound, and color. It was getting hard to breathe, let alone walk. Draupadi gasped and almost collapsed. If he had to carry her, how could he fight? He thought of the dagger he wore. Had she lived long enough among Romans to prefer their way out to surviving in any way that she might?

"I am not your enemy, Draupadi," he muttered. "They are. Fight them."

He pulled her along, expecting any moment a blow, screams of rage, perhaps, or some attack of the spirit that might leave him flat. Instead, she burst into tears. "I can't!" she wept. "I am old. I am hideous. If I leave this place, I will die and crumble into dust."

He had seen crying women before. Tears must mean she was weakening. He tugged this one past the bounds set by her illusions and her fears. She was clinging to him, her face close to his.

"Is that what you want, Quintus, mea anima?" Sarcastically, she brought out the Latin endearment. "This, for all time? Kiss me!" Her face, so close to his, shifted, the smooth tanned flesh shrinking from the bone, wrinkling almost into peeling strips. Her dark eyes glistened furiously in all-but-naked eyesockets, and her lips drew back from yellowed teeth. Her breath smelled not of cardamom, but carrion.

"This flesh you want—already, it rots and dies. Is my death what you want? Is this?" She tugged at her garments with one hand. Her breasts were no more than leathery flaps,

"Cover yourself," he ordered. He tightened his hand upon her wrist, hating how the fragile bones felt as his fingers pressed against them. She screamed, high, anguished, and hopeless like a victim of sacrifice. If she were mad or permanently twisted—better dead. And better that she meet her fate with a clear mind.

What would his men say if they saw him dragging a skeleton across the floor and calling it by her name? They'd think he had run mad, and they would kill him.

Mistress of illusion, he told himself. And her illusions are twisted now.

Gods only grant she wake. He pushed her through a patch of light that showed her ravaged face far too clearly. For an instant, his feet "splashed" in illusion. Then he was walking on "dry land" once more, well away from where she had been set to ensnare him.

She collapsed, weeping without tears, a dry, tearing sound that subsided gradually into mourning without madness.

If he turned her around, would he see the lady or the hag?

"Tribune..."

Perhaps only Rufus's voice could have forced him to that duty, the most merciless of any in his service. He bent, dagger in hand, over her. She lay, her eyes tightly shut in rejection, on her side now. Though she was less warm and beautiful than the illusion she had cast, she was still lovely.

"Mea anima, mea vita," he whispered. "My soul, my life, awake. Look at me."

The eyes remained stubbornly shut.

Who knew what voices were speaking to her within the confusion of her mind? Quintus thought. He had suffered such barrages himself. He shook her roughly, but she turned her face away again. Forgive me, he thought, and slapped her face. Her eyes flew open in rage—and to the sight of her face, reflected in his eyes and the blade he showed her.

"See yourself," Quintus ordered. "You know the difference between truth and illusion. You are not a hag! And I will kill you myself before I let you be a traitor. You are Draupadi, and we need you. Now do you understand?"

"Alone," she stammered, "...the water rises, the earth shakes ... all alone, and death all around..." Her face began to shimmer, to decompose again, and she looked longingly at the stage set for her illusions.

Quintus bent his head and kissed her, hard and fast. "Never alone. Do you understand?"

She clung to him for one blessed instant, then pushed free.

"Ganesha," she said, fear mounting. "And Lucilius tricked me."

"We are ready to fight," he told her. "Your part is over. Go back where you will be safe."

"My part?" She was keeping pace with him as they hastened back to the waiting soldiers. "And there is no safety here."

They reached the soldiers. She took up a position on one side of him, and the standard-bearer stood on the other.

Rufus barked the order to advance.