Byzantium's Crown (31 page)

"I cannot bear to lose you," Marric said.

"You will not. But let me go . . . for now."

Marric stroked her long hair and brushed it back from her face. Stephana's eyes were filling with light, her lips parting as if she spoke to people he could not see. The unconsciousness that blessed men dying of wounds was not for her: if he wanted to help her, he must find another way of easing her passage. He must accept it. Though he would have traded Empire and all at that moment to have her whole again, he bent and kissed her brow. "Be free, Stephana."

Feebly she attempted to cast light around herself. He backed her with strength he didn't know he had. Into the light flowed other energies. Marric saw wraithlike faces he could not name. Then Stephana tried to pull the dagger from her breast, to pass from life to the horizon more swiftly. Her hands slipped on the hilt, too weak for the task.

"Pull the blade out," Marric's master-of-arms had always said, "and the man dies mercifully."

"You will indeed be the death of me," Stephana had told him. He did not want to be responsible for her death. But he was. And he couldn't deny her easy passage.

Kissing her again, he gathered her close. "Don't look, beloved," he whispered, and laid his hands over hers on the hilt. He used all his strength to draw it quickly from the wound. As the hilt, unshielded by contact with her flesh, blistered his palm with the residuum of Irene's power, he hurled it from him. The blade skidded over the floor, and he heard other people in the room recoiling from it.

Stephana's head fell against his shoulder, and her eyes closed. She sighed, and he caught her last breath in his lips.

Marric bent his head over hers and fell forward onto the bed. He could hear Daphne weeping, but his own grief dried his eyes and clutched his throat so that he could make no sound. The gemmed cloak he had been so proud of lay over him and his dead lover, enclosing them in a darkness that he wished were forever.

When Marric raised his head, he knew precisely what he had to do and where he needed to go before lie could squeeze the life from Irene with his own bloodstained hands. He rose. Very tenderly he straightened Stephana's body. Then he stripped off the oppressive splendor of his cloak and draped it over her. There was a crimson splotch of her blood on the pearls, moonstones, and woven silver. He thought it was fitting. If the empire were bought at the price of Stephana's blood, it were bought too dearly.

He had been a fool again. He had been a fool to fear Stephana's powers, a fool to think he could manage without them. If he had only been a magician, his love might be alive now. But he wouldn't tarnish his memories of Stephana with guilt and regret, he vowed.

Stephana belonged with her own. The priestesses would care for her. So he would take her to the Temple of Isis. Surely the Goddess would give him a sign, a way to use the rage that surged up in him like fire through drought-parched fields. This rage, he knew, was dangerous. It would devour him, as could the magic. But he would not allow that to happen.

Marric gathered his dead love up in his arms. Her hair cascaded down onto the cloak, and the pure line of her throat had a pathetic beauty that tore at him.

Why can I not weep? Marric thought. It seemed impious. But if he could not mourn for her, there must be someone gentler than he, someone innocent of blood.

"Where do you go, my lord?" Daphne gasped.

"To the Temple of Isis, Daphne." There was a mourner for Stephana. "Will you accompany your mistress there one last time?"

The Goddess would protect Stephana's poor body now that he, try as he might, had failed to keep life within it. He would leave her in Isis' care. And then he would go and kill Irene. And if he had to use magic or be used by it, so be it. It couldn't hurt him worse than he had already been hurt.

His men crowded into the battered house and murmured at the slaughter. As he walked past them, they fell silent. Nicephorus held out a hand to him. "Mor?"

There would be time later to hear everyone else's lamentations. Now Marric must take Stephana home. Outside, soldiers swarmed in the street, holding back passersby and the
adoring mob that had screamed his name in ecstasy while the empress had cut out his heart.

Like a sleepwalker Marric moved past them, taking the turns and twists to the Temple of Isis without thinking of his way. The simple actions of carrying the cloak-swathed body in his arms, of placing one foot before the other, of not screaming in rage and dashing at the palace kept his thoughts at bay.

Daphne walked behind him. Despite her fear she was determined not to abandon her mistress. As he walked up the steps into the portico, she followed. The square was filled now. The folk who had chanted his name whispered it now as the story passed from one person to the next.

The ancient high priestess barred his entry into the temple. "You have blood on you," she pointed out, her voice distant.

Marric knew that Isis' deepest mysteries were not for men. But overriding knowledge, overriding sense was the command of his instincts: Stephana must be returned home.

"In the rituals," Marric said hesitantly, "Isis succors Osiris. She does not die. But look! Here is one of her priestesses slain. Mother priestess, Stephana's spirit flees to the horizon without honor. Is that right? And can you honestly say that there is no blood—ever—in what you do? Or deny any of your daughters entrance here? Go on, Daphne." Stephana's maid slipped past him into the shadowy entrance of the temple, and the high priestess allowed it.

"She is the maiden," Marric said. "You are the sibyl, and Stephana—she should have been the bride."

The priestess' eyes softened, and she held out her arms. "The goddess will welcome her. I shall call my daughters to bear her within."

"No. I had a vision once. The Goddess appeared to me and told me, 'The time has not come for you to invade the women's mysteries.' But that time has come now. Let me pass, lady."

The high priestess stood aside. With Daphne guiding him along, the way that no man had walked since the temple was consecrated, Marric entered the innermost shrine. Sweet incense burnt in copper braziers. The fires cast shadows onto the walls and stroked the mosaics and paintings into vivid life. Dominating the room was a monumental statue of the Goddess, her wings outspread, sheltering an altar carved of the same unpainted marble as itself. Statue and altar glistened in the radiance of the giant silver polycandelon hanging high above. Marric's eyes blurred as he laid Stephana down on the altar. He touched her face, thinking to mold the still features into some sort of calm, but Stephana had died in triumph. Her bloodless lips were parted in a smile he still could not understand.

Daphne helped him smooth the gemmed cloak into ordered folds. Except where Stephana's blood had darkened them, the jewels on the tablion glistened moon-white. The gift crept to the foot of the altar and crouched there.

Marric backed away from the image of the Goddess, richly adorned in gemmed necklaces and fine silks. Then he prostrated himself before it.

The Goddess' face blurred in the light. Now she looked like a maid even younger than Daphne, innocent and joyous. The light playing on her perfectly carved features shifted and she looked like a stately woman of middle years, her beauty richened with experience and a mother's love. He had seen this aspect of the Goddess before, when he had journeyed sorely wounded into the other world and chosen to return. He had known it as a child, had had it to warm him for too brief a time.

"Take care of her for me, Mother," he entreated.

From aspect to aspect, the face shifted. Marric contemplated it in awe. Finally the Goddess' face became incredibly venerable, wise with visions like those by which Stephana had shaped her life and, at the last, transcended it. Above him the polycandelon swayed. Was it only the flickering of its lights that made the statue change its appearance?

A priestess slipped into the shrine. She filled several of the braziers, then walked over to inspect the chains that suspended the polycandelon. Marric found himself observing her movements, not because of their grace but because she appeared to favor one arm. As she struggled to lift the arm toward the chains, hissing under her breath at the pain, Marric saw that her arm had been bound up hastily with a silk (veil the way a man might bandage a knife scratch after despatching his enemy.

Irene!

Just as the polycandelon crashed down from the ceiling, Marric flung himself to one side. Silver branches buckled and tore free of the heavy base that would have crushed his skull. Sweet-scented oil puddled onto the floor, then burst into flames that spread to the dry, ancient wood within the shrine and licked the trappings of the goddess' statue.

The wounded priestess laughed, a shrill, evil sound. He had last heard it in Stephana's memories.

"Damn you!" Marric shouted, and started after her. He could survive a few burns. All the while he was healing, he would remember how his hands had felt as they closed around her neck and snapped it. The leaping flames cast a red light over Irene, who looked as if she stood bathed in blood. Soon he would have her between his hands, he exulted. Irene ran to one of the walls. A touch released a block of dressed masonry, and she slipped within the doorway thus formed.

Marric hurled himself at the opening. Sooner or later the passages had to lead to the palace itself, didn't they? In the days of the adept-rulers, what had such passages been used for?

The secret door was sliding shut, but in three . . . two . . . more steps, Marric would—

Daphne shrieked.

Marric spun around. The block slammed shut behind Irene. Daphne screamed again, then started laughing the panicky high laughter of hysteria. She still crouched at Stephana's feet. But gradually she was inching along on her knees to put the altar and her mistress' body between herself and the fire that twisted up the beams to the roof. The way to the door was blocked, and the flames were out of control.

They cast furious lights on the cloak, on the mined polycandelon, and the great statue, wrapped now in burning silks. Daphne wore light cotton garments. In another instant she would lose the rest of her nerve and run screaming into the flames. Marric had freed her. He was responsible for her. And he had brought her here.

"Daphne, hold!" he commanded.

Flames rushed up between them. They might die in the shrine, burnt offerings to Stephana's spirit, which neither needed nor wanted such sacrifices.

A suicidal fragment of himself—the last surviving bit that the empire had not claimed as its own—cried that the burning could be no worse than his guilt at Stephana's death or the lust for vengeance that throbbed in his veins. Let him simply throw himself down beside Stephana and lie there until the fire devoured them both.

Daphne screamed again, a high-pitched, mindless keening, and Marric put aside fantasies of suicide. Daphne had loved Stephana and deserved better of Marric than for him to abandon her.

During all the rituals in which Marric had ever participated, the strength of his body and spirit had been something to be used by others. Now he must summon and harness it himself. He had sworn by Stephana's death not to fear her powers, and to try to make them his. He had not expected to be forced to fulfill that vow quite so soon. But it was right that he do so in her presence.

Marric stared into the flames. Fire could be doused. The ground could smother it, or water could drown it. There was no earth, no water here. That left air, a gust of wind to blow the flames aside.

He reached out and stripped the ceremonial cloak from Stephana's body. Let the fire free her quickly. The heavy fabric of the cloak would shelter him and Daphne. He swung it about his shoulders. Then he extended his hands sharply downward and out. Energy radiated from them up around his body. He shut his eyes against the leaping, deadly flames that danced nearer and nearer. Now they cast ghastly crimson shadows on Daphne's contorted face. But now she was rising to her knees, biting her hand to stifle her screams. Wonder drove the insane fear from her eyes. Closer yet, the cast a cruel illusion of rosy life onto Stephana's pallid features.

No. The flames must part. Marric did not ask that they go out, for such was not the nature of fire. But he did ask them to divide as if wind brushed them. That much the fire could do. And that much it must do.

The effort of concentrating on moving the blaze forced a moan from him. His eyes squeezed so tightly shut that red and orange patterns leapt before him. Sweat scalded down his sides.

Flame, part! he commanded silently. He visualized his desire and focused all his will upon it. The flames must part so he could rescue a child and an empire.

Again Marric's hands moved. He looked up and saw the flames bow down on either side of a narrow path to form an aisle twice his height. He would have just enough time to reach Daphne and escape, assuming his will or the beams of the shrine did not crumble first.

"Daphne!" He ran to her and swathed her in his cloak.

"My lady—"

"She is at peace. Now it is our turn. Be brave a little longer, child." Panic would bring the fires down upon them. Already the path of safety to the door had narrowed. Tiny runnels of fire danced on the scorched stone. Marric lifted the girl, hid her face against him, and started for the door. Fire licked him. He smelled his hair scorching. But the heavy cloak protected them both.

Out of the sanctuary he walked, as carefully as if he led a procession. Behind him the fires of Irene's malice roared to new life, engulfing the room. A crash as the ceiling caved in broke Marric's trance. He turned just in time to see the great statue of Isis, unstained by fire or smoke, appear to nod at him before the fire and debris hid it. Then he was running out into the portico and down the steps into the safety and the heavenly coolness of the night air.

The priestesses stood watching their temple burn. Tears poured unheeded down their faces, and glinted in the firelight. Nicephorus and Marcellinus ran up to him. Marric set Daphne on her feet.