The Dance of Time

After Kujulo left to organize the march, Kungas summoned the Ye-tai deserters. They'd been standing nearby, garbed in their fancy new uniforms. Irene had had them made up quickly by her seamstresses, substituting flamboyance where time hadn't allowed good workmanship.

The armor, of course, was the same they'd been wearing when they arrived in Peshawar. The well-worn and utilitarian gear looked especially drab, against that colorful new fabric and gaudy design.

"You're promoted," he told the squad leader. "I think we'll use Greek ranks for the Royal Sarmatian Guards. That'll make you sound exotic. Exciting."

"Whatever you say, Your Majesty."

"You're a tribune. The rest are hecatontarchs."

The squad leader pondered the matter, briefly.

"What do those titles mean, exactly? Your Majesty."

"I'd say that's up to you, isn't it? Get me some deserters. Lots of them." He waved a hand at the low hills around them, much of their slopes now it shadowed by the setting sun. "They'll be out there."

"Ye-tai only?"

Kungas shrugged. "You won't find many other than Ye-tai bold enough to come in. But it doesn't matter. Anyone who's willing to swear his mother was Sarmatian."

* * *

After the king left, the tribune turned to his mates.

"You see?" he demanded.

* * *

When the Emperor of Malwa reached the door leading into the inner sanctum of the imperial palace—the ultimate inner sanctum; the real one—he paused for a moment, his lips tightly pursed.

That was partly because he'd have to submit to a personal search, the moment he entered, at the hands of Link's special Khmer guards. It was the only time the divine emperor suffered such an indignity. As the years had passed, Skandagupta found that increasingly distasteful.

But that was only part of the matter, and probably not the largest part. The emperor hadn't come down here in well over a year. Entering the inner sanctum below the palace was always disturbing, in a way that dealing with Malwa's overlord through one of the Great Ladies who served as its sheath was not.

He wasn't sure why. Perhaps because the machines in the chambers beyond were completely unfathomable. A cold, metallic reminder that even the Malwa emperor himself was nothing but a device, in the hands of the new gods.

He wasn't even sure why he had come, this day. He'd been driven simply by a powerful impulse to do so.

Skandagupta was not given to introspection, however. A few seconds later, he opened the door.

There was no lock. He'd had to pass through several sets of guards to get down here, and the chamber immediately beyond the door had more guards still. Those quiet, frightening special assassins.

* * *

The personal inspection was brief, but not perfunctory in the least. Feeling polluted by the touch of the guards' hands, Skandagupta was ushered into the inner sanctum.

Great Lady Rani was there to greet him. She would be Great Lady Sati's replacement, if and when the time came. Standing against a nearby wall, their heads submissively bowed, were the four Khmer women who attended her, simultaneously, as servants, confidants—and, mostly, tutors. They were trained in the cult's temple in far-off Cambodia, and then trained still further by Link itself once they arrived in Kausambi.

"Welcome, Emperor," said Great Lady Rani, in that eight-year-old girl's voice that was always so discordant to Skandagupta.

No more so than Sati's had once been, of course. Or, he imagined, Holi's in times past, although he himself was not old enough to remember Holi as a small girl. Link's sheaths, once selected, were separated from the dynastic clan and brought up in ways that soon made them quite unlike any other girls. Link would not consume them until the time came, once their predecessor had died. But the overlord communed with them frequently beforehand, using the machines—somehow—to instill its spirit into their child's minds. By the time they were six, they were no longer children in any sense of that term that meant anything.

"What may I do for you?"

The Emperor didn't answer for a moment, his eyes moving across the machines in a corner. He did not understand those machines; never had, and never would. He did not even understand how Link had managed to bring them here from the future, all those many years ago. Malwa's overlord had told him once that the effort had been so immense—so expensive, in ways of calculating cost that Skandagupta did not understand either—that it would be almost impossible to duplicate.

"What may I do for you?" she repeated.

The Emperor shook his head impatiently. "Nothing, really. I just wanted..."

He couldn't find the conclusion to that sentence. He tried, but couldn't.

"I just wanted to visit, " he finally said, lamely. "See how you were."

"How else would I be?" The eyes in the eight-year-old face belonged to no woman at all, of any age. "Ready, as I have always been."

Skandagupta cleared his throat. "Surely it won't come to that. Not for many years. Great Lady Sati is still quite young."

"Most likely. But nothing is certain."