Empire of the Eagle

13

"I will be left alone!"

Draupadi had flung aside the sheepskins she had worn in the heights and strode away from the throng of barbarians who troubled her. There were too many people, eyes and voices; they pressed against her awareness after so long in sanctuary, with only Ganesha, the waters, the trees, and the ageless crests of the mountains for companionship.

Ageless, Draupadi? You have seen mountains fall.

A shout—"Don't go alone!"—had followed her, angering her still further. Not Ganesha: After this long, she knew him well enough to know he wandered back and forth, from the men of gold to the men of the West, practicing these new tongues, making notes for one of his endless histories on their ways, their gear, their looks.

Now, she stood on a ledge, surveying the valley. The caravan had drawn nearer the Stone Tower—but it was still quite a journey away.

Don't go alone! As if her illusions would not speedily convince a snow leopard or a serpent to turn aside! He should know that! Draupadi stamped a foot. Or if he thought she was so feeble, why did Arjuna not come with her? Even now, even this far from their shared past, his eyes followed her as they had when he won her in tournament and brought her back to be wife to him and his four brothers, one of them a king. And before that... he had been the bravest of them, the most loyal to his duty.

If his duty demanded him to shout "Don't go alone," rather than come with her, she would walk alone. She had lived in the wilderness. She had survived war. But now, Draupadi was not sure she cared to be alone. Arjuna's were not the only eyes that followed her. There was that other officer, the fair-haired one, who bore himself as if he ruled a city. His smiles made her want to wish for a dagger. She was glad that the men she had marked as being the most trustworthy did not trust him at their backs, nobleborn though he claimed to be. His eyes followed her as if she were a pastime to be enjoyed, then tossed aside like a game of dice.

Dice, in her family, had always cost her too dearly. Her eldest husband had thrown away palaces and kingdom for it—and ultimately herself. She did not trust dice, nor this man who bore himself like a skilled gambler.

All her long life, she had been a mistress of illusion. What if she showed him a few truths? He would flee in loathing.

She held out her hands. Smooth, unstained, unwrinkled, though hardened from the rigors of her recent journey. Draupadi had learned her lessons well, hadn't she? After all these years, she still looked—no, she was no longer the slender girl who had slipped from cell to library of the Temple school in the city by the shore and through the inner passages to share her fears with Ganesha and the other students she had trusted.

Since then, since the city fell and the sea shrank back into the earth, Draupadi had seen herself mirrored in the water of sea or fountain, in silver, in the metal of shields in all the years of my exile.

Leaving the valley of her sanctuary, looking down upon a place that bore a name she knew had suddenly made those years sink upon her like a burden. Astonishing that they were not reflected in her face—as she saw it in Arjuna's eyes. She knew he was called Quintus in this place and time. She knew that his name meant "five." The fifth son, perhaps. Or, in his case, the avatar of her five husbands. He was so different. As reserved as the twins, he was: It was hard to see in him the kingliness of one of the brothers, the fighting heart of another. Arjuna himself had been a quiet man, she reassured herself. Like Arjuna, this man had suffered, had lost much, had wandered far. Unlike him, though, he had never been acclaimed.

So different—and yet she had known him the instant he strode onto the tiny island of her refuge.

So far they had traveled apart. Please all the gods that they could join together.

A saffron drift of dust cleared away, like a fading spell of illusion, and Draupadi stared down at the Stone Tower. It was closer than it had been after days of necessarily slow downhill travel, but still far away. Years ago, so many years ago—she wished she had Ganesha's memories or, failing them, the scrolls he had left in their retreat, to remind her.

Had the Stone Tower always looked out upon dry lands? She rather thought so: The basin in which she had spent the first part of her life lay far beyond the town called Su-le by the golden-skinned warriors she traveled among. She remembered it as a town near the shore, its breezes rich and wet, refreshing as the grapes that grew on the slopes and near the towns that surrounded a long-gone sea.

How long had it been? Even the dances of the stars had changed!

The wind blew. Again, dust rose. Draupadi smelled dung, some crushed greens, the smoke of a fire, the wild-ness of true desert, with salt underlying it, the salt of a sea that had lapped its shores when the patterns of the stars overhead were very, very different.

She shut her eyes, casting her thoughts as far back as she could. If she thought of the night sky, she knew what stars she would see, and in what ordered dances. Now, memory was easier: the blue of the sea between snowcapped mountain ranges; towns with tile roofs and thick-walled buildings, temple walls and towers overshadowing them, shining with pure light to guide the slim, graceful ships to harbor, heavy with the treasures they carried. She saw the Naacals in the Temple worshipping the flame as an embodiment of the flame of pure thought, a reflection of the Mind and time beyond all worlds. She saw her own cell in that Temple and felt the hopes and growing power of the young student she had been.

Ganesha would remember better than she. Her skill had been mainly with the spinning of illusions. A humble choice, and there were those in the Temple who had hoped to guide her toward greater skill. But she had never been troubled overmuch by pride in those serene days when sunlight shone on the Inland Sea.

There had been so many worthier students in those days. So many fine men and women. All young, save for Ganesha, who had taught them. Strong or stronger than they had believed.

Some said that the Naacals' teachings in such temples were themselves illusions as the crafts she wrought at feasts. They believed that beneath the light, the thought, lurked another truth, and that truth dark. Just as great fish leapt upon the surface of the sea to rescue the occasional sailor, such people said other creatures lurked in its depth to swallow the unwary and, ultimately, to swallow all. Such were the Black Naacals, who saw life as a feast of such creatures, writ large and dread upon the pages of the world, and who saw a share of that feast as the best that they might gain.

Even a practitioner of illusion could see how such a belief would turn treason into necessity, if a Black Naacal wished to be feaster and not fast. She had not, she thought, the strength to withstand them: How should she, when what she made faded? The mastery of true change lay lifetimes away—time that she was grateful to be permitted to spend in study. She had had—what was it they said in these days? All the time in the worlds? Ganesha, to whom she brought her fears, had told her so, and she had trusted him.

Where could I have gone right? She had not been believed at first. Ganesha had his scrolls, his studies. Seeing patterns in the stars as in the land, he had not seen this new threat. In all these years, Draupadi thought, he has kept his memory unclouded. Was that his punishment?

She had realized that for the first time—in so many years—when he looked down about the valley and named it. As the very stars had circled into new patterns, they had mercifully forgotten ... forgotten much. He had forgotten nothing, not even consciousness of the errors he had made.

She too had forgotten in those years of exile. But she had not forgotten her illusions. If she dropped them, she wondered, would they show a woman as far beyond a crone in age and looks as a bone buried deep in the rock is beyond a living creature? She laughed angrily. This creature of an instant, who called himself Lucilius and bore himself like a prince, would flee from her—

And what of Arjuna? In this body, he barely remembered even his name, like a word spoken in the ear of a dreaming man.

Ah, they had traveled so long down different roads, even long after the glory of Mu was swallowed with the Inmost Sea.

Memory, as unwelcome as Ganesha's, struck, and she sank to her knees. She gazed out at the Stone Tower, but saw a gentler, richer—and far older—land instead.

For all of them, life had seemed very sweet in the palaces, in the sunlit towns by that Inmost Sea—until the Black Naacals' greed broke all asunder. They no longer wished to wait for their feast: They wished it now, and they sought ways of binding man and earth and water to their will.

Clouds hid the sun, lit only by lightning with never a drop of rain. The hills shook; they cracked; smoke and molten rock rolled down their slopes. The very seabeds trembled, and great waves began to pound the harbor. Ganesha might have been resigned: He had collected the wisdom of many lives already, and would be quite content to add his light to the eternal flame. Still, she knew, he could be enticed by his love of knowledge—and his love of his students. They were still so young, with the tales of many lives yet to come. In the end, Ganesha's compassion conquered his resignation, and he taught his students one last set of lessons: survival.

The students prepared: boats, food, weapons, and a clear passage to escape. And Draupadi spun the illusions that would let them reach the harbor.

After a week of darkness even at noon, the thunder pealed: as above, so below. The earth rumbled and, with a roar, the sea rushed in to devour the cities that had claimed it as their tributary. Their ship had sailed until the wind had stripped the cloth from its masts, and then those aboard had turned the very force of their minds to keep their course. To the mountains of the west, always west, while the waves roiled about them and Draupadi lashed herself to a mast, singing illusions to keep the creatures at the deep from swallowing her ship along with the other fugitives.

"Draupadi?" The smooth voice stumbled over the syllables of her name. It was the one called Lucilius. Perhaps if she pretended not to hear him, he would go away. It was not worth turning from her memories to squander an illusion on him.

She had known that her fellow students, her teacher, and she would pay a dire price for their flight. By what right did they survive their motherland?

The right of a beast, seeking to survive at all costs? If that were the reason, the price would be beyond bearing. But what if they sought to preserve wisdom against future need as they told themselves they did? How they survived their ordeal would tell them whether they spoke the truth or not.

And then it began. As the seabeds cracked and the sea itself drained away into the depths of the earth, the reckoning came due. They floated till there was no more water. Then, abandoning the ship, they set out on foot through the muck of the seabed, then through what dried into the salt and rock of a desolation such as not even Ganesha ever imagined.

"Lady? Draupadi!"

That one dared to make demands when she was meditating! She turned her shoulder on the young Roman, and then her back, sinking deeper into contemplation of her memories.

There was the night that one of the students had disappeared—he who had been their guide and watchman. Ganesha was old. She had no warrior's training. They held the others back, but the others sustained her and Ganesha as they trudged toward the hills.

"Leave us," she had whispered.

"We are bound."

An old man and a weak woman, and five strong men who might have a chance to live, were they not burdened. It was not even a choice; Draupadi stripped herself of her remaining strength to cast what she hoped would be the greatest of her illusions: We are dead; go on without us; remember us gently.

And so they had, those five men. But they had been right. They had all been bound. And thus, in the twists and dances of time, they had met over and over again. As they did now. But five in one, rather than five brothers? Surely that betokened some change in the patterns of things.

"You should not be here alone." Lucilius dared to lay a hand upon Draupadi's shoulder. She could feel the heat of his fingers circling the joint, stroking down her arm, and pulled away.

"So your officer said," she told him, watching him sidelong.

"That garlic-scented rustic?" Lucilius barked a laugh lacking pleasure or true mirth. "Some senator's errand boy, rather, allowed into the Legion instead of starving like the son of a traitor that he is!"

Draupadi tossed her head. Let him see that she was displeased. It was not like the time that Dushassana had sought to enslave her and strip her, even though she had cried out that she was in the midst of her courses. Nor like the time she had served in a king's court as a serving woman.

She had come far in time and place. She could ignore what she chose.

Ganesha and she had lain in the drying salt and grit of what had been the seabed, dying, as they thought, without hope of rebirth. Her mind had wandered far; Ganesha's, she thought, had journeyed farther yet.

"They will survive," he told her. "They will prevail. Do not weep, my daughter, for we shall surely meet them again."

But her head drooped and illusions stranger than any she had seen danced before her eyes.

Then the Flame appeared. Surely it was right to hide one's eyes from a thing that holy; surely it was right to look away lest she be blinded. Neither she nor Ganesha could do aught but kneel before it. They had feared; they had faltered; and for that, there would be payment. But where they had loved and trusted greatly, that payment would not be beyond them. And they would live.

"And I say you will look at me when I speak to you, seeress or woman or whatever you are!" Lucilius's voice was angry, demanding now.

What did this creature of less than an instant, who dared to touch her, know of such a life?

How long it had taken her and Ganesha to make their way past the mountains and to the homes of living people! How much longer to make themselves places of respect? Illusion wrapped her about: the splendor of fabrics embroidered with gems, the scent of sandalwood and cardamom, the allure of eyes circled with kohl, and fingers tipped with red.

Old she thought she must be, and tried to dispel the illusion that created beauty of such age. And they would live. It was no illusion. The Flame had seen to that.

How Arjuna had smiled the day he had won her! Over all the princes of the earth, he had triumphed. And, as the conch shells blew, he claimed her, and she saw a man whom she remembered in his eyes, though he wore the flesh of a son of these hills. He brought her home to the Pandavas—his mother Kunti and his four brothers. She remembered them too—reborn as many times as they must have been.

In Mu, their minds had joined. Now their bodies joined, too; she had companied with them in palaces and in wilderness until that age ended. They had decided, she recalled, to leave the world, to return to the hills that Arjuna had loved. But the hills had trembled, and they had fallen, one by one.

They had fallen far. She woke in tranquility, sunlight and water playing about her. Again, she and Ganesha were alone.

"You might listen when a man talks," said Lucilius. "I could make it worth your while."

Finally, she turned and looked at the westerner. Fair hair, pale eyes, skin that was weathered, but that otherwise would have been pale: No, there was nothing there for her. And the look on his face—as if he needed only to put out his hand.

On the mountain heights, he could ignore her presence because of the peril of the journey. Now, once again, she saw the expression she had seen in sanctuary—a hunter sure of his prey. He put out his hand again and touched her, not as if he had a right but as if whether he had such a right or not did not matter.

Eyes and lewd hands had followed her at Virata's court when she had been disguised as a serving girl and her husbands as a cook, a dancing teacher, a gambler ... and Kitchaka the general, most of all, had pursued her. He had even caught her and held her, a knife to her throat. She had pleaded with him for a later assignation, which he had granted.

Then she had realized how, stripped of power, stripped of rank, separated from the others with whom she had come down the ages, she was powerless. Then, she had run to seek help.

Now, she cried out wordlessly in anger and slapped him.

And was surprised by the rage that flashed in his green eyes, like a predator caught in torchlight.

"You dare strike me, a patrician of the Lucilian gens.... I suppose you prefer that ploughboy who's got the stink of the armies on top of the stink of the fields...."

Again, he had her by the arm but her own rage, just as much as his grip, was making her shake. She tried to breathe deeply, to wish calm on herself, and to look into this one's eyes seeking understanding. "

She saw pride of family without obligation; greed—a desire to possess, never mind how, and especially if his own possession meant that his enemies went without; anger at being checked by anyone, anything—since he truly considered only those in a position to help him or to order him to be human—whom he had not considered as more than a convenience. She saw contrivance for its own sake, with little guile and less skill; worse yet, she saw the potential that might have made him a man and a warrior, but had, for reasons she could not understand, gone sour. Worse yet, she perceived that he knew he had failed, somehow, of that considerable promise.

How could he live with the horror he was becoming? If they were in the sanctuary, she would not lack for water to form a mirror sufficient to show himself to himself. She could manage without. She raised a hand to gesture, to begin the first of the illusion spells that might tell him what he was becoming.

"You would claw my eyes, would you?" He shoved her to the ground. "I should mark you."

It was Virata's court all over again. Submit or be marked. Fight, or accept the self-contempt that yielding brought. Die nobly, perhaps, when every nerve in her body cried out to live until better times came.

He was bending over her, had a knee between her legs. She cried out and struggled furiously. Nails scratched and gritted in the rocky ground, the hobnails of the footgear that Quintus/Arjuna wore in this guise.

"Don't we have enough trouble, Lucilius, without you trying to hurt one of our guides? With the Ch'in watching. They already think we're barbarians."

"Native women, ploughboy. They don't know their place."

"Draupadi's no camp follower, tribune. It's not your place to teach her anything."

Behind Quintus she could hear other footsteps. She wanted to shout with embarrassment. She should have foreseen this. And Quintus had told her not to go by herself: Had he foreseen?

"You don't order me, ploughboy. Why don't you bow? Scrape for me like the client you are. Call me 'Dominus'—as you called my uncle when you licked his feet on the Palatine!"

The dark-haired tribune pushed Lucilius away from Draupadi, gave him one shrewd shove; the lighter man went sprawling. There was satisfaction on Quintus's face as he faced a man who had been his enemy for years.

Lucilius sprang to his feet in a fighting crouch.

Draupadi saw Quintus begin to lurch forward—she had seen Arjuna throw his brothers in practice thus a thousand times. But this was not practice. Their people were strangers here. That they were not prisoners was only by the grace of the Ch'in, who guarded them. Let them fight, and they would lose all that they had gained.

And so would she and Ganesha, who required their aid.

"Sir, sirs! Stop it! Break it up!"

It was the older one, the one with hair like burning coals, angry red frosted with gray. He seized Quintus/Arjuna and held him.

"You want them to see the two of you brawling?" he warned. "What do you think they'll do if they see you at each other's throats? Might as well—both of you fools— turn in your weapons now to the yellow-skins. Go ahead. Yes, I know. You're tribunes. I'm just a centurion. Spent my life in the Legions. Call out the men. Tell them to get ready. Go ahead and punish me."

He looked upslope. The Ch'in commander had come out, drawn by the shouts and the scuffle. Shaking his head no danger, Quintus reassured the man.

Did he lie, though?

The three men glared at each other. Let them all fight, and they all would lose everything. Draupadi shook her head, remembering the last time. She had run to Bhima, burliest and fiercest of the brothers. Working, incongruously, as a cook. He had scented and silked himself and taken her place in the General's bed. When Kitchaka attempted to embrace what he thought was a frightened woman, Bhima had taken him in a wrestler's hold and squeezed until only a ball of flesh, wrapped in sagging, gaudy, and ruined silks, was left.

How shocked Virata's court had been. And how she had laughed!

Once again, Draupadi laughed. She scrambled to her feet and gestured—and the crushed ball that had been her assailant materialized before Lucilius's eyes.

"Is that what you want?" she demanded. "It was the fate of the last man who touched me."

Lucilius backed up a step, but only one: She would give him credit for that.

But for nothing else.

"You do not want me. You want power to enforce your will. And you take power as you see it—like this!"

Another gesture, and her hands filled with gold ... ringing metal rounds that she hurled at the Roman aristocrat's feet. He was scrabbling in the dust for them when she clapped her hands; the coins changed from cold hard metal into chips of scarce-dried dung.

The tribune flung the chips from him, his mouth twisting in revulsion. Rufus roared with laughter. Quintus took the opportunity to break loose from his grasp. His mouth worked, and then he too laughed. A moment later, the Ch'in soldiers had neared. Draupadi heard Ganesha speaking to them in their own language—some version of the truth, she assumed. They too laughed, and the echoes spread out across the horizon until it seemed that they would reverberate off the Stone Tower far below.

She herself, however, kept face and voice severe. "I am not some follower of camp and soldiers, to be taken up, used, and cast away. Do you need another lesson?" she demanded.

Quintus smiled at her. "Lady, you need no man's protection."

Then he turned to Lucilius. "Maybe we can't roll you into a ball, but I promise you, if you ever again approach Draupadi or any woman in this caravan, I will try. Is that clear?"

Cleaning his hands, his face scarlet at the laughter that welled up around him, echoing, as it seemed, almost as far as the Stone Tower, Lucilius nodded, then left. Though he took care to keep his back straight and his steps measured, almost as if he marched, it had the impact of a rout.

"There will be consequences of this action, daughter," Ganesha told Draupadi. Bending laboriously, he picked up something from the ground. It was a gold coin.

"As always now," Ganesha added, "you wrought better than you knew."

She had meant those coins as illusions, shifting form and aspect for the sake of confusing her enemy. She had wrought better than she knew. The young girl who had been a scholar woke in her once more. She lifted her hand to take the coin...

...and from down in the valley, as if borne in response to their laughter, came the chanting of a mantra. Each tone in the incantation quivered with menace. And replying to it came a wail of pure fear.