Dahak nodded, eyes glittering in suffuse gray light. "I do not care about the harvest."
"Then we will all starve," Shahr-Baraz replied in a sharp tone. "And we've no need of a fleet—"
"We have every need of a fleet!" The sorcerer's voice cracked like a whip, shocking the king into silence. "We are not waiting for the sacred river to flood the land! We are not waiting for a harvest!" A thin, dark finger stabbed at Odenathus, making the young wizard flinch and turn pale. "When will the fleet be ready to sail?"
The Palmyrene blinked in surprise, looked sideways at Khalid, who shrugged, then back to Dahak. "My lord prince... our crews are working night and day by your command, and wearily too, after fighting for so many months without respite—but they are willing men and loyal. They will not disappoint! Four weeks, I would say, before we complete the refitting."
Dahak snarled, a ripping, taut sound and his fingers curled into a fist. Odenathus stared in shock for a moment, then suddenly howled in agony. Blood clouded his eyes and flickering, black lightning raced across his face and breast. Mouth wide in a pitiful scream, the young man collapsed to the ground, body jerking with muscular spasms, spine bent into a harsh bow.
"I've no margin for weeks to pass in idleness," hissed the sorcerer, opening his hand. Odenathus crumpled like a broken dove, sprawling on the floor, limbs twitching and loose. Khalid almost bent to take his shoulder, but caught sight of Dahak's furious visage and stepped back.
Shahr-Baraz had no such patience and took two swinging steps up onto the platform.
"Fool!" A heavy fist smashed across the sorcerer's cheek, rocking Dahak back on his heels. The Boar loomed over him, face glowing with fury. "These are our allies! Not our servants, not our playthings!"
"Aren't they?" Dahak scrambled to his feet, mouth wide in a feral grin. The blow—strong enough to have toppled a wrestler—did not seem to have affected him at all. The two men faced off, tension crackling in the air, a mad look in the sorcerer's eyes. "They are my servants, O King! Do not dispute my commands, for you may find your own neck bent beneath my foot!"
"Dispute?" Shahr-Baraz's voice settled into a precise, cold tone. Metal rasped on metal as the Boar drew the heavy sword at his side. "You are my sworn man, sorcerer, and you will obey your king!"
"Obey? A king?" Dahak laughed softly and his outline shifted, distorting, and he grew, suddenly towering above the Boar. A shocking chill flooded the room and the chittering of insects and crickets and bats roared loud at the edge of hearing. "I am not your man, old fool. I am not human at all!"
A cone of frigid gray illuminated the altar, pinning the king in its pitiless glare. Dahak emerged into the light, head lengthening, incisors jutting from black, withered jaws. Deep-set eyes burned red and Shahr-Baraz stifled a groan, stepping back. The sorcerer's hand—taloned and dark, rippling with scales—clutched at the air. The heavy hand-and-a-half sword sprang from the Boar's fingers, then metal shrieked as the blade twisted and tore. A heavy, crumpled ball of steel clattered away into darkness.
"Bow," roared an inhuman voice. The Boar staggered, gripped by invisible claws. Dark streaks of red scored his face and creases pinged into the laminated metal protecting his shoulders and arms. A great shout leapt from the king's throat and he strained, tendons bulging in his neck, sweat beading on ruddy skin. Dahak pointed his hand to the floor and Shahr-Baraz was thrown down, forehead grinding against frost-rimed stone. "You are my servant, old Boar, since the moment you sat upon my brother's throne. So are the great snared, with power and glory and honor!"
The sorcerer glared at the others, gaze settling upon the Queen, who stood once more, hands clasped at her waist, blue eyes defiant.
"You wish to taste the lash again?" Dahak dragged the king back by his hair, exposing a bull-like neck. A long talon came to rest beside a beating vein, pressing against the skin. "Shall I bleed this boar out, before I let him hang under my eaves, curing for the feast?"
"You may," Zenobia said in a clear, ringing voice. "But you will cast aside a great general if you do."
Dahak barked laughter, a baying, ringing sound. "I will make another, even as you serve, and dear Arad serves, so will the King of Kings dance to my fluting pipe!"
"Will you?" Zenobia took a step forward, oval face intent and calm. "Then you will have to struggle each day to bind his great heart—for he will accept no collar, even one of the mind—and then you will have to watch me as well, and Arad and Odenathus and Khalid—and all the captains of your host." Each name, each word, she pronounced with perfect clarity. "Can even your cold mind cover such great distances? What of your Sixteen? Do they serve with a willing heart? Can you even trust such a creature as C'hu-lo, who will never rest until he looks upon the Rampart of Heaven with a king's eyes?"
"I will!" Dahak's hand lashed out in a flat, chopping motion. To his surprise, Zenobia did not topple, screaming with pain, her body contorted by fiendish punishments. Instead, she staggered, and a flickering pale glow shimmered in the air between them. Half-seen geometric patterns roiled in the air, flashing in and out of sight. The sorcerer bared his teeth, snarling in thwarted rage. His will roared forth, compressing the room to a tiny mote of illumination suspended into infinite darkness. With an effort, he crushed her shields and laid bare her mind to his control once more.
"You see," Zenobia whispered, her body pinned to the floor by Dahak's raging thought. She ceased resisting, letting him flood into her. "Every moment will be like this. A struggle, a contest of wills, until you snuff the last spark of life in this body."
Dahak gasped, sweating with effort, withdrawing his power. The cold grew worse, but Odenathus had recovered himself and muttered soft words. A arc of golden light circled himself, Zenobia and Khalid. The young Arab had been watching with wide eyes, hand firmly on the scabbard and hilts of his saber, though he had not dared draw the weapon. "You could only resist me for an instant..."
"You are stretched thin," Zenobia replied as she rose to her feet again. "The king has recovered, even in this brief moment of relief." Her hand lifted, arm white against the darkness, and Dahak became aware of the Boar crouched behind him, a long knife shining quicksilver in his massive hand. "Strike him down and you cleave away your right arm, your iron fist on the field of battle. Strike me down and your precious Kleopatra is gone. Each of us you crush, your power is reduced by equal measure." A flinty, cold smile flirted with her mouth.
"Even Arad will prove troublesome, if I am gone. Then you will face the Romans alone."
A dry hiss answered her and Dahak rose up, shadow boiling and writhing around him. For a grain there was a colossal form pressing against the walls, the floor and the roof. Stone splintered and flaked. The scattered marble limbs ground to dust. Odenathus' shield wavered, compressed by seething coils and then the apparition passed.
Dahak once more confined only to the shape of a lean, hungry-looking man, stared at the Queen. "Do you think you've drawn me to a stalemate?"
"If so much," she replied gravely, "then I've found victory."
A spasm flickered across the sorcerer's face and Zenobia drew back in surprise. Something like a human countenance shone through for a moment, then the seeming faded, leaving only cold, inhuman features close beneath a shell of flesh. "Victory," the thing said, the word falling away into a low, rumbling hiss. "An ant clinging to a stem of grass in a field of stones should claim so much."
Endless weariness pervaded the air and the Queen felt a chill—not from the icy air—but in the secret place in her heart where two women struggled to survive in the face of constant, unspeakable horror. "What do you mean? We are not... ants."
"Less, then, less than a grain of sand on an endless beach." A queer, unexpected tone of grief entered the sorcerer's voice. "Only Khadames guessed—only he saw—and he is dead."
Zenobia felt the trickling chill double, flooding her tiny sanctuary, drowning her and Zoë and their fragile hope in swiftly rising black water. She knew the thread in his voice all too well. We struggle each day with the same blighting acid...
"You are afraid," she said, shocking herself with audible words. "You."
Dahak's grimace transformed—rage, loathing, a death-like grin—and settled into sullen fury.
"Yes," he spat out. "I fear oblivion, even I who have reached across the abyss and stolen life from death, who command the air, the earth, all the powers that crawl and walk and ride upon the wing!" The sorcerer's hands fluttered open, groping in the darkness. His voice changed again, swelling with agony and despair. "I see the sun rise and some dead part of me begins to live! I walk in the green hills and I rejoice to feel cool air upon my face! I see the multitude and see their arts, hear their songs, feel the rushing, flowing life in their breast and I am... afraid."
A tapering nail stabbed in the air, splitting darkness from darkness. Stars rushed out of the void so revealed and Zenobia swallowed a shout of amazement. A blue-green world whirled past in sable night, a pale moon winging at her shoulder.
"Here is such a small thing," Dahak groaned, framing chaos with his hands. "Yet so precious! I cut out my heart, killed my soul, bled away every human feeling—yet they remain! This tiny, frail pocket remains..." He turned, face ghastly with fear and incipient horror. "You do not understand, you cannot understand. How could you, for you have not looked upon the abyss and seen the dread chaos yawn before you, blotting out stars, suns, entire worlds?"
Struggling to master her astonishment, Zenobia groped for words. "No... we have not. Can any human look upon the abyss and survive, or keep mind enough to tell another?"
"No." Dahak shook his head. While she spoke, he had mastered himself. The cut sealed, the green world vanished, the stars swallowed up once more. Only his voice remained, a dry, whispering echo in the encompassing darkness. "Know this, rebellious Queen. There is a door of stone hidden far from here. Hidden and sealed with signs and powers beyond your grasp to bind or loose. While that door is closed, the green world you love so much lives. Should it open—and it stands closed now only by my will!—then this frail refuge will be annihilated, swallowed, consumed in the blink of an eye."
Zenobia said nothing, though her heart quailed before such a vision.
"We are a fluke," the sorcerer's voice whispered. "An aberration. Random chance casting up a bubble shining in golden sunlight. Now, you will do my bidding and follow my will, and serve freely, or all this will be lost."
"You will destroy the world, if your desire is thwarted?" The Queen's voice trembled slightly.
"Not I," Dahak answered in a hoarse, exhausted voice. "Not I."
"Then..." The Queen struggled with a clenching pain in her gut. He is telling the truth!
"I baited annihilation," the sorcerer said mournfully. "I opened the door just a hair, just a thin crack, and snatched power and glory and knowledge from dread chaos' domain. But I drew attention in the briefest of moments—in a slice of time so small no human mind could catch, or follow, or measure its passing—and now the door is closed, but it is known, and watched relentlessly." A hollow laugh echoed. "The watchers at the threshold do not tire or wander or sleep. They have eternity at their beck and call and they are very hungry."
"But while you exist, the door is closed," Zoë said tensely, pushing the Queen aside. "You are holding it closed against them."
"Yes," echoed out of the darkness. A few faint gray sparks began to drift among the pillars, shedding a corpse-light upon stone faces. "I disturbed a delicate balance and what once remained closed of its own nature yearns to open fully."
"Can the door be truly closed again?" Zoë regretted the question as soon as the words escaped her lips.
A mocking silence was her only answer. The Queen looked down, unwilling to venture further words.
"You can die, then?" The Boar's voice rumbled out of the dim shadows. Shahr-Baraz had quietly taken a seat on the floor beside Khalid—who sat clutching scabbard to breast, barely breathing, eyes screwed shut—and Odenathus, who watched the Queen with a queer, troubled expression. "You are afraid not only of your own oblivion, but what will come after."
The silence shifted, charging with malice and anger. The Boar pursed his lips, thinking. After a moment, he smiled faintly. "You are a canny old snake," the king said, "but secrets are hard to keep. Shall you tell these children, or shall I?"