Robert Asprin - Shadow Of Sanctuary

Zaibar, captain of the Hell Hounds, bellowed his comprehension of Molin's order.

6

The women, and they were all dressed as women though Seylalha knew some of them were the eunuchs who routinely guarded her, crept forward to remove the heavy cloak from her shoulders. She shook the cramped silk and knotted her fingers in anticipation. A partition of fine netting separated the musicians from the other participants in this drama, but their sounds were familiar and oddly soothing. The carpet on which she had always danced lay slightly to one side of the centre of the tent and behind the carpet was a mound of pillows to which the burly 'women' directed her. The white-robed men were invited to partake of a banquet laid out on a low table and fell over each other rushing to the sumptuous food. The masked figure who stood apart from the rest and seemed distinctly uncomfortable under his splendid robe was led to a separate table where only stale bread and water had been laid and an ugly, heavy short-sword awaited him.

So, that was the god, Seylalha thought, as the mask was lifted from his face. He was weak-chinned - but what civilized man did not show the stains of his rich foods and soft bed? He was, at least, a whole man. The man-god would not look at her, preferring to watch the darkest, least penetrable recesses of the tent. Seylalha knew fear for his curiously absent passions. Sliding off the cushions she struck the first position of her dance, expecting the musicians to lift their instruments.

But the musicians reached for their clatter-sticks and the eunuchs guided her rudely back to the cushions. She shook their hands away, aware that they dared not hurt her, but then her attention, and the attention of everyone in the tent, was riveted to a newcomer, a more appropriate man-god who had eased out of the darkness and held an unsheathed dagger in his left hand.

He was tall, massive, etched with the harsh lines of a rough and feral man. The one whom she had mistaken for the man-god embraced the newcomer with hearty familiarity. 'I was afraid you wouldn't show up, Tempus.'

'Both you and He had my word. Torchholder is a canny man; he distrusts me already -T could not walk in right behind you, my Prince.'

'She is beautiful...' the Prince mused, glancing to Seylalha for the first time. 'You've reconsidered? It would be for the best if you did ... even now. Her beauty means nothing to me. None of this means anything to me except that it must be done and I must do it.'

'Yes, you're the one to do it... though she is more tempting than I would have thought possible.'

The chiefmost of the gowned eunuchs moved to separate the men, giving the interloper a stiff punch on the shoulder. Seylalha, who could read the language of movement, froze in terror as the feral stranger turned, hesitated and plunged the dagger deep into the eunuch's chest all within the space of a few heartbeats. The other 'women' who saw little more than a blur of movement, wailed and groaned in terror as the dead eunuch collapsed to the rough ground. Even the white-robed feasters ceased their eating and became a frightened knot of sheep-like men.

'It will be as I warned you, my Prince - not merely the Ten but all the others. If you've no taste for bloodshed it would be best if you depart now. My men await you. I will do my father's work.'

'What of Zaibar? I knew nothing about that until Molin addressed them.'

'They did not see me; it is unlikely they will see you.'

The one who had been called the Prince slunk into the darkness. The other retrieved his dagger from the corpse.

'Our Imperial Prince is not one for rituals of bloodshed and violence,' he said to everyone in the tent. 'He has asked me to take the role of my father in his stead. Would any here gainsay my right to act for Vashanka and my Prince?'

The question was purest rhetoric. The bloody corpse was testimony to the price of gainsaying this intruder. Seylalha wrenched a heavy tassel from one of the pillows and shredded it behind her. She clung to the belief that her life had been an arrow directed to this night, her dance would be her salvation; but that belief was shaken as the eunuchs who had ruled her for so many years cowered in fear and the feasting men made a doomed attempt to find hiding places.

With an unpleasant smile the man-god strode to the table where he ripped a mouthful of bread from the loaf, drained the beaker of salted water and lifted the crude sword. He shifted it once or twice in his hand, his fingers adjusting to its awkward balance. With the same smile still on his lips he advanced towards the terrified men in white.

Screaming, despite the drugs, they raced through the tent as he winnowed through their numbers. The wisest, least drugged, plunged through the netting into the company of musicians. The man-god stalked his ersatz-brethren as if the darkness did not exist and with a vicious determination that bespoke his acceptance of the role. He shoved the shrieking women aside with his free hand and delivered the final strokes with the bloody sword. The killing completed, he set about gathering the heads of his enemies and placing them in a gory heap on the banquet table -a task made no easier to do or watch by the edgeless sword he wielded.

Still kneeling among the pillows, Seylalha drew the sheer silk tightly around herself, twisting the loose ends about her arms until she had become a sea -green statue, for the cloth did nothing to conceal her beauty and little to conceal her pale, quivering fear. When the blood-smeared stranger who was more god than man had placed the last trophy upon the table he vented his divine violence on the woman-garbed eunuchs. Seylalha pulled the pins from her hair; the honey-brown cascade covered her eyes and hid her from the sight of the guardians lying butchered on the ground. She took fistfuls of hair and pressed them against her ears, but that was not enough to block the knowledge of how the half-men had died. As she had done so many times as a child and as a woman, she began to rock back and forth, keening softly to gods whose names she had long since forgotten.

'It is time, Azyuna.'

His voice broke into her prayers. His hand clamped over her wrist and drew her inexorably to her feet. Her legs shook and she could not remain upright except through his hold on her. When he shook her slightly she only closed her eyes tighter and swayed limply in his grasp.

'Open your eyes, girl. It is time!'

Obedient to the outside will Seylalha opened her eyes and shook back her hair. The hand that gripped her was clean. The voice that commanded her had something of that forgotten wild land of her birth in it. His hair was the same colour as her own, but he was not a man come to claim his bride. She hung from his grip as mute and fearful as the quiet women behind the torn netting.

'You are obviously the one to make Azyuna's pleas - however little you resemble her. Do not force me to hurt you more than I must already!' he whispered urgently, leaning close to her ear, his breath as warm and thick as blood. 'Or have they not told you the whole legend? I am myself, I am Vashanka - we both grow impatient, girl. Dance because your life depends on it.'

He flicked her wrist and sent her sprawling to the blood-dampened carpet. She brushed her hair away with a forearm made red from his grip. The man-god had shed the sombre clothing he had worn for the killing and stood near the pillows in a clean gold-worked tunic, but the crude sword still hung by his thigh - a rusty blush on the white tunic to mark where its cleaning had not been complete. She read the tension in his legs, the minute extension of his left hand towards the sword-hilt, the slight lowering of one eyebrow and remembered that the dance was her freedom.

Seylalha brought one hand through the tangled mane of her hair, pointed two fingers to her musicians. They struck a ragged, jarring chord to mark their own apprehensions but the tam-bourist found her throbbing drone and the dance began.