The grit that crunched underfoot gradually yielded to spurs of rock, then a rocky floor covered with drifts, and worn in patterns that even now showed the smoothing of water upon rock very long ago. They seemed to be marching through the foothills of some mountain range below the surface of the world.
“Move along,” Rufus said for what had to be the fiftieth time that day to Ganesha. Once again, the adept had sunk to his knees, staring raptly at the outline of a fish’s skeleton embedded in a rock. That is, Quintus thought it was a fish, though he had never seen one that looked that way. “Wouldn’t you rather eat a real one?” he asked.
“I would rather be at peace,” Ganesha replied. “I am very old, and I would be glad to rest. But the tale is not over yet; and as long as it goes on, I must be part of it—to undo what I did. And what my brothers and sisters, the Flame forgive them, still do.”
Rufus shook his head. They looked at each other, senex and senex. Two old men, old from the desert as well as in years; too old for much more than tending land and handing on their wisdom. Quintus’s throat ached. Ganesha should be basking in a temple courtyard someplace— Juno grant—talking to a child who looked like Draupadi or like himself. And Rufus—he should have little more on his mind than showing a child that might have been his grandson how best to tie up vines or, for the hundredth time, allowing him to see his sword, or even hold it, as a very special reward.
Long wrinkles angled down from the corner of Rufus’s eyes, squinting shut as always in the desert glare. He looked older than Ganesha and, in the harness he stubbornly refused to lay aside, far more frightening.
Yet, Ganesha was the elder by far and possessed of powers far more fearsome—those of the White Naacals. Despite the heat, Quintus shuddered. The Naacals’ power harnessed the virtue of the sun: Misused by the Black, such power had cracked the land through which they now struggled and a great sea had vanished into the depths.
Better not think of all that water. A drop of sweat ran down Quintus’s back. Momentary relief: Now that was a delicious thought, like the time after harvest when he was a boy, his chores over, and free to slip off his tunic and plunge into fresh water. He could dive as deep as he could and emerge, spluttering and laughing on the other side of the arch.
Arch? What arch?
The ebb and flow, the lapping and splashing of water seemed very real in that moment. The arch? Any fool knew the Arch of Memory. And so did he. He had dreamed it long ago: the gateway that welcomed those who served the sun to the island that was one of their schools and fastnesses. Statues had ornamented that arch, statues of ancient heroes and wise men and women, depicted with beasts out of legends that Quintus did not know, all surrounding the great, many-headed serpent that meant wisdom and power—the illumination of the sun.
He did not even need to close his eyes to see that arch. A moment of vertigo came. Place and time flickered in and out of focus. Once again, he could hear seabirds and the splash of oars, the shout of pilot to the guardians of the shore, hailing them from the gateway. And he knew the price of that gate to the unwary. Those who were not expert in the passage were swept onto a rock shore.
Quintus fought not to think of the image of the arch that thrust itself so insistently into his consciousness. Draupadi would tell him that this was illusion, the sort that thrust a man from his wits and off the nearest cliff— or that left him prey to the Black Naacals. The Eagle’s staff warmed in his hands, a warmth that ran up from his hand to his shoulder and down into his spine. For a madman, he felt surprisingly well.
Again came one of those flickers between then and now. One of the madmen tied to a camel whimpered and giggled, then fell silent. Now Quintus saw the arch as it was in this time and place. No longer a matter of pride for artisans and engineers in its construction or its ornament, it looked like a skull, most of the teeth rotted out and one temple battered in. The span of the arch was weakened from the many rocks levered out of it by tremors, perhaps, or eroded by countless desert storms.
Most of the gleaming stone was gone, and many of the carvings. The heroes’ faces had been blotted out, hammered into nothingness like the tomb of a disgraced ruler. A few statues still raised weapons in defense against ancient enemies. And the great serpent still occupied the space below the keystone. But how changed it was. It was no longer a symbol of light, but of illumination wasted, power turned in on itself, fueled by a hunger that grew from age to age because there was not enough, not ever enough in all the world to feed it. It would devour the world in a rage that it had not even more to eat.
Draupadi caught her breath in a faint sob. “And to think how fair this all was once.”
The usual trick of the light in the desert made the despoiled arch seem much closer to them than it really was. The approach actually took them many hours of hard climbing up an immense hill toward what had once been an island. That rock ahead—was it a cliff or a fortress? Or, all the gods help them, was it the temple that had once graced the height?
They would do well, Quintus thought, to rest and to let their beasts rest and to attempt the gate by full light.
He ached. And he knew that if he suffered, the men behind him had suffered worse and the beasts worse yet. And Draupadi—he ought not to think of her as gentler than he, weaker than he, but he did—until he saw her face, which hardships had refined, instilling dignity and power into already-great beauty.
A flicker of memory lit his consciousness: In the wilderness, when his brother had lost kingdom, crown, freedom, and wife by his gambling, Draupadi had only screamed once—when they had tried to take her. And then she had vowed to wash her hair in the blood of the man who had dared—and kept that vow, as he recalled.
No, it was folly to fear she was too frail for this.
Behind him a horse screamed, and rocks clattered down the slope. Oaths rose, followed by Rufus’s rasping shout for quiet. The coppery tang of blood touched the air. One of the dazed men laughed, then sobbed, muffling his face in his hands. Hurry, fool, he told himself, or you’ll have no one left at your back but corpses and madmen. The two magicians. Rufus, until that great heart of his burst. And probably Lucilius, yoked together as they seemed forever to be.
But it was only another pack animal fallen. It might be best to leave all of the beasts here and go on, though what the beasts would do if no one returned…. Gods, he was his troop, man and beast: Every loss hurt as if it had been carved out of his own flesh and bone, even after so many deaths. The Eagle’s standard felt comforting in his hand. And it made a fine staff as they climbed up toward the crumbling arch.
Ssu-ma Chao caught his eye, and Quintus was all attention. He would never forget that he had lived and kept his weapons only by the Ch’in officer’s goodwill. He gestured for Quintus to go on ahead. Rufus leaned against the rocks, waiting for the weakest men and beasts to pass. (He would straighten up when they came in sight, of course, lest they see him doing anything that looked like easing up.) The column was, in fact, as carefully guarded as he could make it. The gods only send that it survive to reach what lay beyond the arch. One rockfall, for example … gods avert.
And then what? This journey was all “if’s.” If they survived. If this place in the center of a desert more fearsome than Tartarus proved to hold the spring of sweet water that travelers’ tales had spoken of. If they met the Black Naacals and were not blasted into the kind of glossy black stone that littered the sides of a mountain that spat up rock and fire. And finally if they were able to retrace their path and be granted safe return out of this desolation.
Keep your head down, he reminded himself. Watch your footing. Watch the rocks up above for what might crawl out from beneath one of them, or come hurtling down. He dug the butt of the standard into the grit and gravel. It bit strongly, and he started up the slope.