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.
26
There were ships on glinting blue water, small boats floating like swans or larger ones with oars stroking with the rhythm of the great wings of birds of passage, dipping and turning as the ships glided away from coastlines and spears of rock in which birds nested and from which they too sailed. The flags of the Motherland, brave with their disks of the sun, flew from masts. Below, on deck, sailors ran back and forth, steps as ordered as those of a dance but more urgent.
He stood watching as his ship came about between two rocky peaks of some dark stone that glinted in the sunlight and the light reflected from the changeable sea. But those were not just rocks jutting out from the expanse of the sea or markers indicating that the waters round-about might be treacherous for the uninitiated. Art, science, and craft had labored over them for many years, building piers at their bases and climbing steps up their hard surfaces to platforms that held beacons and gongs to guide ships home and warn off the unwelcome. And, at the rocks' highest crags, engineers had wrought long and skillfully: A triumphal arch joined two of the peaks, with scenes of the Motherland's history sculpted in high relief.
A shadow fell on his face, but his heart lifted and sang as his ship passed beneath the Arch of Memory. For beyond it lay the harbor, and on the hill above the harbor stood the temple where the Naacals studied and where they served the sun. This was home. His home and that of—
Who screamed?
Even before his eyes were open, Quintus's hand flew to his sword—broken now, he must be wary—and he leapt to his feet. Leapt too fast. Careful, man, or you'll fall overboard—no! Where was he? When was he? The sea of blues and green, with the gold of sunlight gilding a sail or the edge of a seabird's wing or striking fire from the crystal glinting in the living rock of the Arch of Memory—they were all gone, long gone. A sullen dawn glared down from the east like a soldier hoping to flee a battle he has no stomach for.
Again, Quintus heard a bubbling scream. He set out for the edge of the camp. One thing was certain. A man couldn't scream over and over like that if his throat were cut. The voice arched up into pure madness, then ended suddenly.
Ssu-ma Chao rose from his knees beside a limp body. "Dead," he said. "Did you catch that last word?"
"The shadow, the shadow," Draupadi repeated it.
Lucilius ran up, short sword in hand, present when trouble turned up as he always was. "Look you!" He gestured.
On the ground beyond the circle of light still cut by the Eagle, even in this harsh dawn, long shadows fell like bats shrilling to each other at the uttermost edge of a man's hearing, more felt than heard. Shadows like unto the flow and sweep of long, black cloaks, darkening still further as the sun rose.
Draupadi clapped her hands. The shadows remained. She raised her voice in a chant. The words faltered and came out hoarsely. The shadows flickered. She drew breath and sang the more strongly, clapped her hands once again, and they finally withdrew. She almost sagged with weariness, but caught herself.
Ganesha came up behind her. She spoke to him quickly in a language Quintus did not know, dismay in her voice.
"Yes," Ganesha answered her in Parthian. "They get stronger. And will continue to do so the closer we come to them."
"Do they think we are children or fools?" Ssu-ma Chao asked.
"Very likely," said the old magician. He laid his hands on Draupadi's shoulders. "They know we are with you. If it were I, I would seek to drain the two of us, leaving this, our army, without protection."
"Army?" Ssu-ma Chao's bark of laughter sounded almost like a sob. "At every dawn, we become fewer and fewer. Come and see."
It was one of the Ch'in soldiers who had collapsed during the time when the earth shook and time past and time present blurred, seeking to blot out mind and body alike. The man's face was set in what would have been a mask for the theatre signifying panic. For if ever that god had laid his grip upon a man to steal sanity and breath, it was now.
Lucilius muttered something along the lines of "loading up," and "the line of march." Ganesha smoothly interposed his bulk between him and the Ch'in officer, lest Lucilius hear.
"We could send men out to scout, see if those Black Cloaks are anywhere in sight. Or smell," Rufus offered, oddly indecisive.
"No!" Quintus and Lucilius shouted it together. They could not afford to lose more men, soul as well as the mind.
"He was only a common soldier," said the Ch'in officer. "But he served faithfully."
"He served you well even in the manner of his dying," Draupadi told the officer. "For whatever reason, he was—how shall we say it—aware? sensitive? vulnerable, " she brought out the word with the air of one struggling to express sophisticated concepts in a language more akin to a child's speech, "to the influence sent among us by the Black Naacals. Who knows what they might have done had he not screamed and waked us? Until the end, he was faithful; in the end, he gave up his life for his fellows. His ancestors can look down upon him and be proud."
Even the Ch'in officer's narrow eyes widened in respect. He heaved himself off his knees and saluted the dead armsman as men wrapped him in his cloak and covered him in a shallow, hastily dug grave.
"And now?" he asked. His eyes went to Quintus. Lucilius glared as he always did when Quintus was deferred to as leader.
But it was Ganesha who answered. "We go forward. Always forward."
He gestured at the Eagle, which glinted in the coppery rays of the risen sun. Light welled out from it. "We will be guided—but the path will not be easy."
Day melted into day, and the dunes through which they passed loomed higher and higher. For some time, as many as possible who could ride, did. Then, as their beasts tired, they walked, leading them.
Rufus muttered, "It's like looking up from the bottom of a well. What sort of pit are we dropping into?"
Of course, no one had any answer for that. Day by day, they were descending, perhaps into what would have been the deepest part of the seabed. Day by day, the shadows ranged alongside them. At first, they paused if you looked at them dead-on. And the higher the sun rose in the sky, the smaller they were, vanishing at noon.
Later on, though, later on, it took Draupadi's or Ganesha's knowledge to disperse them. Closer and closer they ranged, not fading even at noon. Even for these men, the strongest who had set out so many months ago, it was hard to rest at noon when no shadows should mark the trail, and see these shadows, as it seemed, in a midday camp of their own, just watching—or ranging out in the late afternoon when all shadows lengthened. Quintus had a private nightmare that, one day, they would curve around one of the larger dunes and find an army of faceless shadow-soldiers between them and their goal.
On the fifth day after the first madman died, a Roman recovered from the stupor into which he had fallen. He recognized his thankful comrades, vowed himself strong enough to march—and disappeared late in the afternoon. The man nearest him had heard his companion shout and run out into the waste, arms outspread in welcome. He had started after the straggler, but two of his fellows had toppled him and sat on him.