"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.
33
"Wait!" Quintus flung up a hand. For the first time, he countermanded one of the senior centurion's orders. Despite their peril, the expression on Rufus's face made him grin.
"Sir, they've killed one man already. They're stronger, don't you feel it?" For the first time, the senior centurion questioned an order. And it was a good question.
The lights under the huge dome were fading to the sullenness of a dying oil lamp, and with a smell even more foul. The darkness was gathering in the form of mists, a black dampness that raised hackles and a cold sweat. The eyes of the Legionaries showed white and shining against it. Some of the slaves had begun to tremble. One or two tried to drop to their knees, but the Romans at their sides held them up. They were used to discipline. Quintus hoped they would not try to bolt; it was too cruel to blame and kill men for a cowardice they had never been taught to withstand.
Now the clangor of the gong seemed to shed ripples of darkness, too. They gathered and flooded upward, as if to touch the Eagle. The bronze, which had blazed so brightly before its captivity, appeared to tarnish before the Romans' very eyes: a bird in molt; a bird badly needing freedom from its confinement.
"I can pierce that." Draupadi moved her hands, even though they trembled, and her voice was hoarse from the spells she had already set that night.
She was exhausted, Quintus knew. But she would not rest until she had a chance to undo what she had done. In that regard, she was very like a warrior herself.
One of the Black Naacals strode toward Ganesha, passing by his previous victim with barely a glance at the pale, drained body. Then darkness covered it with a filthy pall. The Black Naacal's robe, where it touched the blood that had drained from the man, clung to his legs on one side.
The first time Quintus had seen Ganesha, they had fought, and Quintus had lopped off his head, or so it had seemed. The old sage had survived, for a wonder, and Quintus had always wondered thereafter if he had battled illusions. He had no such doubts about what they faced now and that there were some things that even demigods could not endure. Had not Bacchus been torn apart—or that strange Egyptian deity he had heard women whisper about? He owed Ganesha a life or a clean death. Rufus was right. Time, and past time, to advance.
"Wait!"
By all the gods of Hades, Lucilius? What did he want?
The waning light flickered on the patrician's face as he placed himself between the Black Naacal and Ganesha.
"I did not know you were so fond," said the Black Naacal. His chuckle was like a blow. Lucilius reddened, then blanched, mastering himself with a control he had rarely shown.
"Why cast away what might be a weapon in your hand?"
"Cast away? Little traitor, I use what comes to hand. See, this senile wineskin of a man is filled with power. Tapping it, I drink; and I take that strength for myself. And then..."
The ground rocked underfoot. Perhaps the Black Naacal would grow so confident of his powers that the earth would open and swallow this place: victory of a sort for the rest of the world.
"They are coming."
"Spies, slaves, and outlaws." So much for the remnants of a great Legion and a Ch'in army.
"You need her if you are to use the old man. He cherishes her."
Ganesha did not move. His eyes were shut. What odd byways of memory and power did the old man now travel?
"There speaks a man besotted. Can you not wait for your dainty?" The Black Naacal began to turn away. "He did not break when we drugged her. What folly makes you think he will control her now—or even that we can get her back? These traitors break, but they do not bend. So, we may as well take his power and bend it to our will. You have your gold, and the promise of more when we stamp the face of the earth into an image of our devising. Do not seek for more."