'It is time, Azyuna.'
His voice broke into her prayers. His hand clamped over her wrist and drew her inexorably to her feet. Her legs shook and she could not remain upright except through his hold on her. When he shook her slightly she only closed her eyes tighter and swayed limply in his grasp.
'Open your eyes, girl. It is time!'
Obedient to the outside will Seylalha opened her eyes and shook back her hair. The hand that gripped her was clean. The voice that commanded her had something of that forgotten wild land of her birth in it. His hair was the same colour as her own, but he was not a man come to claim his bride. She hung from his grip as mute and fearful as the quiet women behind the torn netting.
'You are obviously the one to make Azyuna's pleas - however little you resemble her. Do not force me to hurt you more than I must already!' he whispered urgently, leaning close to her ear, his breath as warm and thick as blood. 'Or have they not told you the whole legend? I am myself, I am Vashanka - we both grow impatient, girl. Dance because your life depends on it.'
He flicked her wrist and sent her sprawling to the blood-dampened carpet. She brushed her hair away with a forearm made red from his grip. The man-god had shed the sombre clothing he had worn for the killing and stood near the pillows in a clean gold-worked tunic, but the crude sword still hung by his thigh - a rusty blush on the white tunic to mark where its cleaning had not been complete. She read the tension in his legs, the minute extension of his left hand towards the sword-hilt, the slight lowering of one eyebrow and remembered that the dance was her freedom.
Seylalha brought one hand through the tangled mane of her hair, pointed two fingers to her musicians. They struck a ragged, jarring chord to mark their own apprehensions but the tam-bourist found her throbbing drone and the dance began.
At first she felt the uneven ground beneath the rug and the damp spots upon it, just as she saw those icy eyes and the outstretched fingers. Then there were only the years of practice. the music and the desperation of the dance itself. Three times she felt herself collapse on a misplaced foot; three times the music saved her and, writhing, twisting, she caught herself with will-driven muscles that dared not feel their torture.
Her lungs were on fire, her heartbeat louder than the droning tambour and she danced. She heard only the pounding rhythms of the music and her heart; she saw Azyuna, dark and voluptuous, as she had first performed it before her long toothed, bloodstained brother.
The god Vashanka smiled and Seylalha, honey-hair and sea-green silk twined together, began the dervish finale of the dance. There was a salt-metal taste in her mouth when she doubled into a barely controlled collapse on the carpet, limbs trembling and glimmering with sweat in the torchlight.
Darkness hovered at the end of her thoughts, the total darkness of exhaustion and death; a freedom she had not anticipated, but in the still-bright centre of her thoughts she saw first the bloody god then the white-and-honey stranger, both smiling, both walking slowly towards her. The sword was gone.
Strong arms parted the hair from her shoulders, lifted her effortlessly from the carpet and held her close against cool, dry skin. A leaden arm shook off its tiredness and found his shoulder to rest on. Had Azyuna loved her brother so deeply?
'Release her! I'm the proper sister for your lusts.' A voice which was not Seylalha's filled the tent with images of fire and ice.
'Cime!' the white-and-honey man said while Seylalha slid helplessly back to the carpet.
'She is a slave, a temple's pawn - their tool to capture you and Vashanka both!'
'What brought you here?' the man's voice was filled with wonder as well as anger and, perhaps, a trace of fear. 'You did not know ...' .
'The smells of sorcery, priests and the timely knowledge of intrigue. I owe you this much. They mean to bind the God.'
'They meant to fill the lily-Prince with Vashanka and gain a Prince if not a child. Their plans are sufficiently thwarted.'
Seylalha twisted slowly, raising an arm slightly to see past her hair to the tall, slender woman with the steel-streaked hair. Her breath came easier now; the dance had not killed her - only the god could give her freedom now.
'Mortal flesh is no bond - as you well know. Vashanka's children bear a special curse ...' the man-god said, taking a step towards the woman.
'Then we'll complete their sorry ritual and damn the curse. They'll kill the slut when she bleeds again and for us - who knows? A god's freedom?'
The woman, Cime, jerked the knot loose from her vest, revealing a body that belied the steel in her hair. Seylalha felt the man step further away from her. Cime's words echoed mockingly in her ears. She had envisioned Vashanka falling upon his dark sister, this man-god would do no less. And she, Seylalha, would lie unbroken until the full moon. While brother and sister advanced slowly towards each other Seylalha's toes closed over the hilt of the discarded sword and dragged it into her reach. With serpentine swiftness and silence she shot between the pair, facing the woman, breaking the spell that drew them together.
'He is mine!' she screamed in a voice so seldom used that it might have belonged to Azyuna herself. 'He is mine to bring my child, my freedom!' She held the sword to the other woman's breast.
The sister stepped back; anger, thwarted desire and more burned in her eyes, but Seylalha saw the fear in her movements and knew she had won. The man's fingers wove through her honey hair, closing on the neck brooch that held the cloth at her shoulder, ripping it from the soft silk.
'She's right, Cime. You can't lure me with His freedom; I've felt it for too long already. We'll play Torchholder's little game to the end and let the Face of Chaos laugh at us. The girl's won her child. so leave - or I'll let her use the tent-peg on you.'
Cime's face was fury unbounded, but Seylalha no longer cared. The sword dropped from her fingers as soon as his arms lifted her a second time and carried her, without interruption, to the pillows. She grasped his tunic and tore it back from his shoulders with a determination equal to his own. The mute women gathered their instruments and found a compelling harmony with which to fill the tent.
Seylalha lost herself with him until there was nothing beyond the pillows and the memory of the music. The torches were long since exhausted and in the darkness her god-lover was neither awesome nor cruel. He might have intended rape and pain, but her passion for a child and freedom consumed him and he lay asleep across her breast. Her body curved against his and though she had not meant it to happen, she fell asleep as well.
He grunted and jerked upright, leaving her puzzled and cold on the pillows. Wariness tightened the muscles of his leg. She raised herself up on one elbow without learning the source of his sudden concern.
'Cover yourself,' he instructed, thrusting his torn tunic at her.
'Why?'