“And you believe what they tell you about the outer world,” Rufus mused.
“They broke our world,” the woman cried. “I myself saw people fall from the oars to which they tried to cling when the last ships pulled out of harbor. How should we not believe what they say—or dare not to serve them?”
“Lady,” Rufus said, “you might have died.”
“True, we might. But then, there were the children, and always, always, there was some paltry hope. Hope such as you have,” the woman retorted, “or you would have lain down to die too.”
Her eyes lit on Draupadi with a terrible surmise. “You, though, you are young. Fair. Perhaps you…”
“Do you see them so often?” Quintus broke in. He had seen very few of the Dark Ones, but their traces left him little desire to see more. Could so few terrify a tribe for generations so that they would live here in submission, content to wait each time till their masters returned?
Hard to believe that there existed greater masters of terror than the Legions of Rome. That double line of rotting bodies on their crosses—such a warning would serve as long as any slaves remained alive to see it. Yet, that was physical fear, not this blight of the spirit that oppressed these castaways, with their numberless years.
A glance went around the circle of castaways, judging, summing up, questioning.
Flickers of time and place had bound them together here for all those years. So well they knew each other that it seemed that they could speak without words—or was that a trick they had learned from the priests they served? And if so, could he truly trust them?
How many of these folk, he wondered, had the power that Draupadi and Ganesha did, untrained within them? He might have wagered on the woman Draupadi questioned, she whose hands were so cruelly twisted—from torture, he was certain. She had served, but not submitted.
But why had she not used any power she had? There were, as she said, the children. And there was something else that might have prevented them. They had hidden their little jewels of learning, their devices of power. They claimed they could not remember what they were. And such secrets … it would not be hard to forget… a man dead here, a woman in her dotage there: and where are the secrets that they themselves harbored? Just meaningless words and clues. After a few generations of such losses, perhaps, that was all they had left.
And even if they preserved every one of the White Naacals’ teachings and had the skill to use them, had they still the will?
For that matter, had Draupadi and Ganesha the fighting will after all these years of hiding and studying the Dark Ones?
They had best be done with waiting now, Quintus thought. What had they been waiting for?
The answer, when it came, made him want to shout out a denial. Surely, they had not waited just for him? Why had they not acted when he was Arjuna, who had been a prince, practically a demigod?
Arjuna might be a prince, but he was no Roman. A Pandava, perhaps. A master of his arts. But Rome—Rome spanned the known world and reached out for more, as had Alexander in his pride. And as had the Motherland.
Best to test them. “So you sit here,” Quintus asked. “Like rabbits to be fattened for the table?”
The man called Manetho, who had first approached the Naacals, glared at Quintus. “We have some small protection,” he said. “Doubtless you would think our resistance paltry. Let us show you our defenses, our walls, our traps….”
Manetho had sense as well as pride. He would not, Quintus suspected, show the Romans all of them.
“If they want us, they must come and claim us,” said the lady. “We hide, and we endure. When they are away, we even contrive to live, a little. So it makes it harder when they return, because we dared in that little space of time to hope. As we did this time. And then,” she sighed, “they returned and their coming was worse than before.”
“But you are here,” blurted one of the younger men. “You have withstood the Black Naacals’ anger, and you are masters of arms. You can lead us!”
I was a farmer! Quintus thought, who wanted no more than to settle down with my acres and a mule and as many children with amber skin as Juno Lucina might have granted Draupadi and me—even though the idea of all that elegance and wisdom in a robust farmer’s wife was enough, even now, to make him smile.
“Let us show you what we have.”
“Lead us.”
“Let them show you,” said Draupadi. “It will ease their hearts, if nothing else. And who knows…?”
With him out of her way, perhaps she could learn even more.
Quintus rose, hand-signaled several of the Legionaries to accompany him, and gestured to Rufus. “Take command until I return.”
Rufus looked up. “Trouble again?”
Quintus shrugged. Lucilius probably had slipped away long enough to fill his lungs with clean air. Since they were, strictly speaking, equals, Quintus had forborne to set a watch on him: It was better, besides, if he felt himself unguarded to work such treacheries as he had. “If the tribune returns soon, let him think he commands, but…”
Rufus nodded. Quintus reached for the standard.
“Lord,” said Manetho. “That is a thing of power. Here, the walls of the old shrine shield it. In the stillness of the night, though, its presence will shine up like a pillar of fire.”
Leave behind the standard that had cost so much in blood and lives and spirit? That was the weapon that he and the White Naacals had sought? Eyes watched him, and murmurs rose from the circle around the fire. The murmurs deepened to a buzzing in all of the tongues spoken here—but so rapid that he could not understand it.
If they were trapped here, he would have to eat these people’s food, drink their water, and trust them, if they were to trust him in return. If he wished to learn the secrets of any power they had, he must share his own.
He placed the staff in Rufus’s hands, certain it would accept him. He was right. “On the manes of your forefathers,” he told him. “And on your oath.”
Rufus saluted. “On my soul,” swore the centurion.
Quintus followed Manetho outside, slipping past Valmiki and Ganesha, still gazing up at the stars and shaking their heads. They had passed beyond patterns, he realized, to specific stars—talk for adepts or priests, not warriors.
He and Manetho dodged around a rock outcropping that might once have been outer walls. Within that jumble of rocks lay a path that looked very precarious, a tower that looked dangerously ready to collapse. Yet it was along this way that Quintus was guided.
“Follow in my steps,” said Manetho.
Quintus followed along a passageway cunningly concealed in the very wreckage of the walls and bearing evidence of some use.
“From here,” whispered Manetho, “our youngest men and even girls watch for traces of caravans … or…” he had not finished the sentence. “And when we see such, we wonder if we can dare contact them. To warn them away from what our life has become.”
Quintus bent his head. “You did not warn us.”
The man scuffled at a broken tile. It glittered for an instant, then dropped beneath a larger stone. “We saw what you bore and sensed the power in it. And you marched right up to the arch, as if you knew what to expect and how to fight it. The Light defend us—we saw the Naacals and we dared to hope. And now, if things go ill and we do not win and some of us do not die, you will have ages in which to hate us.”
“These Naacals do not hate,” Quintus said.
The path down which Manetho led him wound outward, to the very ramparts of what had once been an immense wall, suitable for processions or defense. What had this palace or temple looked like in its prime, when it rose proudly from the hill that crowned the island on which it had then stood? If he shut his eyes, he thought it might be imprinted there, someplace on his inner eyelid as well as in his deepest memories, memories so old that even the years he had spent living Arjuna’s life seemed recent in comparison. The fortress shone in his mind: massive sloping walls between pylons, encircling a core of towers facing the harbor and the great arch that adorned it, reflecting up from the blue water.
The night wind blew. For an instant the smells of salt sweat and salt water mingled—ancient memories of a lost sea.
The night was black here, and the blackness had as much to do with the feel of this place as the hour. Once light, life, and power had radiated from the crest of the hill—gone now, replaced by the menace and a hunger responsible for that darkness of spirit.