Byzantium's Crown (17 page)

"Don't try it. Turn around. I want to see your face as you die. Move!"

The sword point jabbed his back. Reluctantly Marric turned. Just when he thought that the gods had finally turned their eyes toward him, this was how it ended? Then he remembered the dagger he had honed and that he carried as a final weapon in his loincloth. Marric eyed the overseer narrowly. Could he dodge, draw, and come up under the big man's guard before Sutekh drove his point home? Marric calculated feverishly. Nicephorus must have gone to ground. Perhaps he would appear to distract Sutekh just long enough.

"Don't you move."

Stephana's voice was even softer than usual, and it quavered. But the grip of her hands on the shaft of the bloodstained kontos did not shake, and her glance was relentless blue fire. Now it was her turn to give the orders.

Her enemy turned and laughed. "You always did keep at arm's distance from me, didn't you, girl? As if you were made of silver. Well, that's over now. Your friend here is an escaping slave and a thief. And you? You're an accomplice. You know what you can expect"—a pause and a suggestive laugh—"but there's no reason for you to die if—"

Sutekh moved toward Stephana. She brought the lance up sharply toward his chest. Horror warred with determination in her face. Certainly she could kill the man, but then what? Stephana was too near release from the Wheel and far too precious to him to have bloodstains on her hands.

Still Sutekh moved toward her. He had misjudged her utterly, taking her reluctance to kill for cowardice. Grinning, assured of his prey, Sutekh reached out to grasp Stephana's lance.

Light exploded from it, and Sutekh brought his hands up to his face.

Marric leapt at him, dagger ready. He drove the knife home beneath Sutekh's ribs. His death shriek became a gurgle as blood filled his lungs. Then he collapsed. Marric pushed the overseer's body away, then straightened to face Stephana. Would the sight of death revolt her? Would he?

"I would have killed him for you," Stephana whispered.

"I thank you once more for my life," Marric reached out and broke the slender collar she wore on her neck. He hurled it aside. The soft metal rang as it hit the stable walls and disappeared.

"Do we run now?"

"Once we find Nicephorus. Nico?"

"Here, Mor. What should we call you now? When I saw Stephana move in, I figured that the two of you could settle with Sutekh while I finished readying the horses."

Nicephorus' calculations were riskier than Marric liked.

"We should hide the body," Stephana pointed out. "And this." She buried the lance in fodder. Nicephorus began to tug bales down over the overseer's body.

Rubbing her throat where the collar had rested, Stephana studied Marric and Nicephorus. "We will need clothes, medicines." She paused and an expression of distaste crossed her face. "Money. And Lady Heptephras trusts me."

"Shall I go instead?' Nicephorus asked.

"You can't." Stephana vanished before he could protest.

Clean rags hung from a nail, and Marric used them to bandage his friend's injuries.

"Just as well we were not severely hurt, my prince—"

"Marric. Or Mor, if you feel more at ease with that name."

"Where do we go next?"

This was a problem. Out in the swamps were Berbers, angrier now and more desperate since they had lost their first fight. They were too dangerous for wounded, tired men and a woman with hair the color of silvered wood to encounter. And the roads were still patrolled. If the officers saw two men wearing slave collars—

Taking hammer and chisel, Marric pried off Nicephorus' collar. "Now," he ordered, "don't let your hand slip unless you want to commit regicide before I'm even crowned."

Nicephorus laughed too long at the feeble joke and bent to his work. "To think that we have been slaves together."

"We are slaves no longer, brother."

When his collar was off, Marric flung the thing into the pile of bales that hid Sutekh's body. The time when another man was Marric's master was past.

Nicephorus held out the sword with which Sutekh had planned to slay Marric. The prince belted it on. Freedom, headier than any vintage from the imperial cellars, began to pound along his veins.

"Nico, do you or Stephana know where the druid lives? Best we lie up until nightfall, then head for the city."

"I also know where Taran lives." The unexpected voice spun them both around.

"Strymon!" Nicephorus cried. Former slave and major-domo stared at one another.

"Aye."

"How long have you listened here?"

"Long enough. I came into the stables to check for wounded. Instead I witnessed a fight. An execution, I might say. Being too old to be warlike, I hid."

"Don't stop me now," Marric said. Even to his own ears, his words sounded more like a plea than a command. "I don't want to kill you—"

"But you would. Or Nicephorus would. Even Stephana, who I used to think shivered at the sight of a bird flying across her shadow."

"I was not seen," said Stephana. She came in with her arms laden. "I took no more than we will—" She broke off, and looked beseechingly at the major-domo. "I only took what we would need. Strymon, please, if you saw that fight and overheard, then you know that Mor—that Prince Marric must go free."

Incongruously the old man laughed. "It's like a tale told in the taverns! If there were a ballad, I would applaud the singer."

"And so?" asked Nicephorus.

"This much I understand. There was a battle. Our brave overseer was gravely wounded. He crept here to die. In the confusion, one of the most rebellious slaves robbed the house and fled. He took with him his friend and his woman. In times like these, such things often happen."

"You understand discretion too," said Stephana. "Isis' blessings he upon you, Strymon." She walked toward him and kissed his cheek. "Thank you. I shall never forget you."

"If you are to reach Taran's before sunset, you must ride quickly, child."

Marric led his horse outside. He lifted Stephana into the saddle, then mounted himself.

"Can you ride?" he asked Nicephorus.

"Ride? I could fly!"

Stephana laughed, and Marric tightened his arms about her. Nicephorus mounted, and they pounded out of the gates, away from slavery into an uncertain future.

As soon as they cleared the villa's gates and reached the twist in the road that protected them from watchful eyes, Marric turned off the road and stopped. He waved Nicephorus closer.

"If we keep to the road, catching us will be like feeding a tame crocodile," he said. "Stephana, you may trust Strymon's good heart; myself, I think it's been too long devoted to good bookkeeping. Nico, can you find Taran's place by yourself?"

"Certainly. I have slipped out to see him by night."

"And yet you always returned." Marric was astounded.

"Didn't you come back after you took that boy to the healers? I knew I had something here that needed doing. I never guessed that it was to help a prince regain his father's diadem." He laughed ironically.

Stephana leaned forward. "Nico, ride now! They're less likely to see us if we split up."

"You have not seen the city under Irene," Nicephorus told her. "I stay with my prince."

Hoofbeats made both men reach for their swords.

"Who's that?"

"Does it matter," Stephana cried softly. "Into the swamp!"

In the marshes insects chirped and fluttered about them and made them glad of the hooded cloaks Stephana had plundered, dark ones blending well with their surroundings. Whispered directions allowed Marric to make steady progress through the treacherous land.

"This is the long way around," Stephana said. "We'll have to take the rest of it in the dark."

"Nico," Marric ordered, "get moving. You can tell Taran to expect us." At least Nicephorus would get through safely.

Stephana laughed. "The Berbers could search the area until the next flood and never find Taran unless he wanted to be found."

Nicephorus nodded and was gone. His horse's footfalls died away. It galled Marric that Nico and Stephana shared knowledge of which he understood almost nothing. But after all, they were initiates into the Mysteries of which Imhotep had hinted. Most of Marric's life he had heard of some ritual or other, but he had not believed what little he had heard. Upon a time, he had been taught this much: his ancestors had ruled as more than men. Now the great Horus name that each emperor assumed was useful only for inscribing on triumphal arches and obelisks, or for curses. Marric had long ago decided he could dispense both with the symbolism and with any power that might linger about it. It was just possible that he had been mistaken.

"You were," Stephana answered, though Marric hadn't thought he had spoken. "Once the ruler possessed the gods' powers to pass through flame, to read hearts, to fathom minds, and to bind men to his cause."

Marric's arms tightened about his lover as if to bind her to him. She was a seeress, and he believed in her powers: why not wish for powers of his own? What would I do with them? Become another Irene? Even Alexander managed with only secular power.

"Softly," he said, "sound travels in the damp."

"Head south, Marric." Now the sun was a brazen disk that smoldered to extinction at the horizon. The horse picked its way along the driest path.

"Are we far from Taran's"

"That way." They rode on for a few minutes. "Now left," Stephana whispered. "Taran couldn't tell you about this place before because as long as you're uninitiate, you remain vulnerable—"

"How much risk do I place you in now?"

"We have no other choice." Stephana, despite the dangers ahead, laughed. As Strymon said, the whole situation—escape from slavery, hiding from Berbers—seemed like a tale of Digenis the Borderer. The dangers seemed unreal, the creations of a singer's harp.

"Power to pass through fire and water," Marric mused. "To read hearts and minds. To bind men. My father had such a power, yet I have never heard—"

"Really, what could you hear until you were ready?" Stephana asked. "Do you know the children's game, 'What I tell you three times is true'? Have you ever just learned of a thing and then, the whole day long, heard of nothing else? It's just so with initiation."

"Imhotep—the priest of Osiris in the city—said I was not ready."

"Ah, but you will be. You will be. Already, can you not detect truth in a man—or the lie? Did you not bind Nicephorus to you, even when you were almost dead? And what about me?"

Marric might have kissed her if he had not been intent on their path. Time was precious. Full night would render the marshes treacherous. Already the red and yellow flowering plants had dulled to gray, and the rhythmic chirp of swamp dwellers had intensified.

"Have I bound you?" he asked. "Then I am content. My heart, I am prince of a line that cannot continue, even if it deserved survival. There were only two of us in direct descent. And Alexa is dead. We had employed the bearmaster from the north to aid us, but we could not even help ourselves."

"Is the bearmaster a great lord?"

"An Aescir, one of the men of the ash," Marric said. "He brings white bears to rulers. The bears never harm him. He calls them his children though"—he chuckled, then obeyed Stephana's instructions to turn at the hummock—"a cub did scratch Irene."

"He wields power," Stephana decided. "The king rules beasts as well as men and land. He is the land. Why else do you think you turned from the power you already had to risk your life to gain Empire?"

"Alexa summoned me."

"She could have escaped alone, Marric. No. My love, you seek the throne not because it belongs to you, but because you belong to it. You are still a slave, Marric, slave to the empire, What will you do?"

Anger at being taunted, even in Stephana's familiar, beloved voice, flared briefly, then died away. "I will thank the gods for such bondage." As they rode, he thought about it. "My allies among the Kutrigur once offered the chance to ride the borders. I refused, but until now never knew why. And I'd have liked to travel to World's End."

The sun blazed one last time as it sank, and the pools they rode past were reddened, as bloody as the day itself had been. The horse's hooves made sucking sounds in the mud.

"I'd best lead him," Marric said. He started to dismount. Stephana kept her arms about his waist, holding him for a moment longer.

"I am sorry if the truth angered you," she said. "But if you accept that you belong to the empire, then you must understand—"

"What I understand fight now is that these lands are totally impassable after dark. Unless, of course, you have cat's eyes as well as the powers of prophecy." He kissed her lightly to end the conversation. Her lips tasted of salt.

"Marric, you cannot return to Byzantium without some idea of what you face. Promise me you'll let me scry for you tonight. Promise."

It would be the most intimate involvement he had ever had with magic. Yet she had asked it of him, she who asked nothing. What was the worst that she could say? Reluctantly Marric nodded. Taking the horse's reins, he walked forward.

The horse's head bumped Marric's shoulder, and he froze at a sudden noise. He recognized it now. It was the sound of harness, the squelch and clatter of horses picking their way through the swamp. He heard a suppressed oath but couldn't make out the words to know whether they were Greek, Egyptian, or Arabic. He drew his sword and set his back against the horse.

"Get down and hide," he hissed at Stephana, who refused to move.

Closer and closer the noises came. Then they passed, as if whatever force lay out there regrouped for an attack. A troop against one tired man. Let Stephana hide, and he would send the horse out to distract them. If he had time, he would join her.

The troop rode back their way.

"Get down!" Damn it, had terror paralyzed her? She had been brave enough facing down Sutekh. He reached up to assist her, but she pushed his hand away.

"Watch the mist," Stephana said, and gestured. From her parted lips came a trilling sound. Shadows thickened on the ground. The evening mist rose and encircled Marric, wreathing about curved blades and the metal of warriors' trapping. He saw the Berber's eyes, fierce, bright, and filled with blood lust as they rode straight at him.