"Excellent!" Ganesha said, clapping plump hands together. "Look up!"
Quintus gazed up into the sky. Once again, the stars bloomed, even more brightly than in the deep desert.
"You see the patterns in the stars?"
Ganesha pointed out the ones Quintus had been taught as a boy. "When I was your age, there was no Hunter, no great or lesser Bear. We had the Naga, the Crown ... ah, they are all passed. But the patterns shift in the sky. And when certain patterns emerge, then it is time for change in the world. As above, so below. It is a crucial time, and past time. Does it not seem to you that there is no order, no justice in the world, that all is confusion?"
His father dead afar, his pretty, vigorous mother withering, his grandfather dying, rigid in his bed, their lands lost. Betrayal in the desert, the slithering in the sand of serpents he could not hear, the vanishing of carts from the illusions that should have saved them.
What if you were not mad, but right, to sense that all was amiss?
He sat back down and used the scarf of honor to dab at his brow.
"Have you ever seen," Draupadi asked, "men and women who resemble Ganesha and I? Who look like us, but with whom you would never sit, much less listen to unless you came armed and protected by strong amulets?"
Her hand moved over the water of the pool, and faces formed. "Have you seen any who look like this?"
Dark hair; eyes kept lidded, but dark and with fire in their cores; narrow-lipped mouths; a high-bred look, but one that seemed to raise his hackles the way the rustling of unseen serpents had outside Merv.
Twin to Draupadi, perhaps, but a twin as devoted to darkness as she seemed to the light.
"Those are the Black Naacals," Draupadi told him. "For as the stars moved into their appointed patterns, they stirred. And we have been drawn from our long contemplations, and you from your proper life to stand against them."
He was insane. In the morning, they would miss him. They would seek him out. And they would find him, his face twisted in a madman's grimace, his hair torn out— that is, if they did not count him fled.
"Draupadi!"
Both of the creatures who called themselves Naacals stiffened as if scenting the air. It quivered, seemingly thickening, and from as far off as the cliff walls ringing the valley, Quintus heard the rustle of giant coils. Descending by night, seeking out the warmth of the camp, the lives of his men...
"No!"
"Hold!"
Ganesha picked up his scroll. Draupadi opened her hands in the gestures that Quintus had seen summon her illusions. For a moment longer, the air thickened and the rustling drew closer. Quintus drew his sword.
"You cannot slay the serpent with a sword," Ganesha told him. "You need a bow—Gandiva, which only Arjuna might draw."
"You do not need me," Quintus told them. "My men do. Let me go to them."
"The serpent has been contained, illusion banished with illusion. But I am no warrior, nor is Ganesha. For the serpent of the Black Naacals to be slain, we must have a man of war. You. And you must have weapons. It seems to me that, just as a bird flies, with the serpent that it has caught dangling from its beak, your Eagle plays a role in what we must do. And it may even be that you, like Arjuna, must seek out weapons that could wreck the earth. But better at your hands, should you err, than at those of the Black Naacals."
From far across the lake, Quintus heard someone call out. The watch? Had the guards found someone slain, or discovered him missing? He glanced up. Banners began to fly at the horizon—crimsons and purples and golds— as the night sky dimmed, hiding the stars that he had heard signaled such war for the world. It was all but dawn, and he had never known.
He had passed the entire night in conversation with these Naacals or spirits—whatever they were, they were beings at least as strange as the genius loci of his childhood.
"It is time," Ganesha said. He picked up the huge shell and blew into it, producing a cry that any trumpeter would have praised.
"You've given away your location," Quintus pointed out.
"They do not seek us, but you," Draupadi said. "And they bring news that you must hear."
11
"Sir! Tribune!"
As if he had fallen asleep for a moment, his consciousness shifted. When he returned to awareness, he saw only barren rock: no carpets, no cushions, no old man with an elephant's head and supple hands: only two priests or prophets in clean but threadbare robes, gazing at the sun as they performed morning prayers. Threads of incense spiraled up from sticks driven into the cracks in the stone slab on which they sat. Carpets and cushions were gone, and the lights in the water had winked out as if pulled beneath the ripples.
"Tribune! Where are you?" Quintus knew that familiar rasp, knew the pause that meant that Rufus was hand-signaling for scouts to flank the place on shore and a detachment to rush it.
Three men pounded through the passageway. Their swords were out, and their boots struck sparks from the stone.
"Hold!"
The Romans stood, gazing in amazement at the falls, the pools, and the priest and priestess seated placidly, their heels turned up in their laps, opposite one of their own officers.
The Legionaries firmed their grips on their swords. Ssu-ma Chao and his guards, spears at the ready, appeared behind them. The morning sun glinted on Lucilius's fair hair.
Rufus glared, not at the priests, but at his officer. For going missing, for leaving him with another tribune whose orders he did not rely on. Quintus could only thank the gods he was an officer and not one of the men under the senior centurion's authority. But there was more to his anger than that.
"These people are unarmed. Friends," Quintus snapped. "What's your report?"
The centurion ushered two men forward.
"Gaius, Decimus, tell the tribune what you told me." And it better be the same story, if you know what's good for you, was the accompanying threat.
Draupadi and Ganesha ceased their prayers and sat watching, serenely interested and unafraid, despite the intrusion of so many armed men into their shrine. The sun beat down on their heads. Even if they were surrounded by water falling into a pool, and growing things, it would be a hot day. It was hard to remain on guard in such a place. The very sound of water falling over ancient rocks promised rest and peace.
But they were adepts in illusion, Quintus reminded himself.
"Sir, the centurion set us to guard the wagons that camped outside the causeway."
Very properly done, of course. Quintus had not liked the look of those particular wagons or the way they had struggled halfway down the slope into the valley, then turned around.
Seeing no apparent danger from a priest and priestess in shabby robes, Rufus sheathed his short sword. Despite the sunlight, he wore his metal helm. Lovingly, he tapped his vinestaff against his palm.
"Sleeping on duty..."
"Sir, by all the gods, I swear it, we never took our eyes off them. They camped; they built a fire; they drew from their own stores...." Gaius, a man young in the Legions and with the stocky build of the Italian provincial, all but stammered.
Behind him, Arsaces struggled to translate his words into Parthian for Ssu-ma Chao and his soldiers, who shifted from foot to foot, not in impatience but with increasing suspicion. Ganesha gestured with his hand, and the Persian looked up, astonished. Ssu-ma Chao barked laughter once, then fell silent too.
"Didn't you find it strange that they would use their stores when they had a chance at fresh water and grazing?"