Shadow of Ararat

THE PALATINE HILL, ROMA MATER

It was full dark when Maxian returned from the Forum. He was tired and his temper had not improved with a long afternoon spent listening to Senators droning on about the will of the gods and the assurances of the oracles that the Emperor’s campaign in the East would go well. Of late, he had been sleeping badly, with strange dreams troubling his few hours of rest. Despite his eldest brother’s admonitions to take up the burden previously carried by de’Orelio, he had not done so.

As he had planned, he had visited the Offices provided him by Temrys twice, smiled at their ostentatious decor and then left. The official staff and their careful watchfulness made the rooms useless for his task. He knew that Aure?an expected his aid and assistance, but instead his thought returned again and again to the dead craftsmen. He fingered the little lead slug in his pocket as he climbed the stairs to his apartments. He was accustomed to leaning heavily on the undefined “feelings” that were the tool-in-trade of the healer and the sorcerer. The feel of the matter of the scribes reminded him too much of both that dreadful night in Ostia and the experience in the temple at Cumae.

There were forces at work beyond normal sight. He could almost discern them, walking in these ancient hallways. When the palace was almost deserted, as it was now with the Emperor and much of his court gone to Ostia and the great fleet, with only the sputter of the lanterns and the occasional sight of a slave, dusting or mopping the floors, Maxian could feel the weight of the years and the tragedies that had occurred here. From the corner of his eye, if he was careful not to look, the shades of those that had lived here and died here could almost be seen. When he had been younger and had first come here, they had been welcome; the dim outlines of old men, clean-shaven, fierce and proud. Those were the strongest, those who had ruled here in the long centuries of the Empire. Now, with his skills grown and matured, he could sometimes see the others-those who had died in violence, those who had died in childbirth, those who had wept, or laughed, or loved here. Even the stones whispered, trying to tell their stories.

He stopped at the entrance to his apartments; a thin slat of pale-yellow light showed under the door. He had left with the dawn to accompany his brothers to the Forum; no taper or lantern had been lit then. He calmed himself, reaching inside to find the Opening of Hermes. Once he had done so, he drew the power of the nearest lamps to him, causing them to sputter and die. He placed a hand on the wall, feeling the room beyond. Three people waited within, none near the door. The room beyond was watchful, but not filled with anger or hostility. He tilted his head to one side, willing the sight away. It receded and he opened the door.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the three people within. “I trust you have something of importance to say to me. It is late, and I am tired.”

Gregorius Auricus nodded, standing to bow. At his side were two others; another of equal age, who Maxian realized with a start was the woman once known as Queen Theo-delinda of the short-lived Lombard state. The Emperor Ti-berianus had perished trying to drive her out of northern Italy. The other he did not know.

Gregorius gestured to his two companions, “the lady Theodelinda, an old friend of mine, and Nomeric, a fellow merchant, though he lives in Aquilea on the Mare Adria-ticum.”

Maxian nodded in greeting at each in turn. Theodelinda bowed and Nomeric nodded. The Prince put up his cloak and hat on pegs by the door and went into the small kitchen off of the sitting room. The palace servants had delivered a tray of cold sliced meats, flat bread, cheese, and some little dried fish. A stoppered bottle of wine completed the dinner. Maxian picked up the tray and returned to the main room. Once he had seated himself and taken a draft of the wine, he picked up one of the fish and began chewing it. He gestured to Gregorious Magnus to have his say.

“Well, my lord Caesar, I apologize for intruding on your solitude here, but some things had occurred to me since our discussion at the baths and I thought that I should share them with you. We shall not take a great deal of your time. Theode‘ and Nomeric I brought so that you would know the extent of the trouble that is brewing. I account them both good friends, though as you see, neither is a citizen. Theode’ was spared in the destruction of the Lombard state, accepting an amnesty and taking up residence in the hill-town of Florentia. I made her acquaintance through letters.

Nomeric at one time was the chancellor of the feodoratica of Magna Gothica in upper Pannonia.“

Maxian raised an eyebrow at this, for it was generally ill advised for members of the Imperial Household to be meeting at night in their chambers with high-ranking members of subject states, particularly Gothic ones. Gregorius, however, seemed to think that it was perfectly acceptable.

“Nomeric, of course,” the old magnate continued, “no longer serves the Gothic king, having retired from that duty. He is a, well, how to put it… an ambassador without credentials to the Empire.” Nomeric, who had been carefully saying nothing, his face placid, cracked a tiny smile at this.

Gregorius leaned forward on his walking stick. “I cannot expect that you will not pursue the matter of which we spoke earlier. In the course of such an investigation, you may find that you have need of monies that do not come from the Imperial purse. You may find that you need assistance, or help, or even protection. I have spoken with the lady, and with the gentleman, and they-and I-are willing to offer your our assistance, help, protection, and funds, if you will accept them.”

Maxian finished the last of the cheese, putting down in the little paring knife. He wiped his lips on the sleeve of his tunic and cocked his head, saying “And in return, you expect that I will do what? Show you favors? Influence the law? Be the voice of your business concerns, your peoples, in the court? My brothers and I do not look favorably on those who attempt to bribe the officials of the state. Why, in fact, do you think that I will need help beyond that of the state?”

Gregorius stood up, hobbling a little on his ancient legs, and walked quickly to the door. For a long time he stood next to it, listening. Then suddenly he opened it and stepped out into the corridor. He looked both ways, then returned to his seat, shutting the door. Tiny beads of sweat dotted his brow. “My apologies, my lord Caesar, but I am overly cautious. Theode‘, tell him what you think is afoot.”

Theodelinda glanced at Gregorius in concern, then turned back to Maxian. She had deep-blue eyes, almost the color of peat. Maxian struggled to focus his attention on her words father than the thought of what she had looked like when young.

“My lord,” she said, “after the death of my husband Agi-lulph at the battle of Padua, I was among the captives taken by the Emperor. We all expected to be slain out of hand or sold into slavery, but Martius Galen Augustus came among us and made an offer of amnesty to each man and woman that would forswear arms and reprisal against the state. Our gratitude was great, for we had come to your land as invaders and had hoped nothing less than to conquer Italy and make it our own. That the Emperor should show us some mercy made a great effect on me, even with the blood of my husband soaking my dresses. I took myself, along with those of my household who would follow me, and settled, as the venerable Gregorius has said, in the town of Florentia.

“It may surprise you, lord, but Florentia, while small, is a center of trade and manufacture. In particular we are very proud of our textiles and weaving. My people are clever with their hands and I was able to start anew, as the matron of a business rather than the ruler of a people. We have prospered. We are not citizens, but we believe deeply in the just law of the Empire. Our fathers were barbarians, living in wood and forest, but that is not what we want for our children.

“A strange thing has come to my attention, however. When we came to Florentia the textile fabricae there was not overly large, but it was doing well. The town bustled with business. Our settlement there, and our new business, only added to that. In the last years, however, we have attempted to better ourselves again, by adopting new practices suggested by my sons and daughters. All of these efforts have failed. Of my eleven sons and daughters, only two remain alive, and one is crippled by the fall of stones from the construction of the temple of Hephaestus.

“For a long time I was sure that these ‘accidents’ were the work of our rivals in the dyeing and weaving trades. But then I learned that the same kind of accidents had befallen the other families as well. At last, driven to extremes by the calamities, I went into the hills and sought out a wise woman who tends a shrine at Duricum. I spoke to her of our plight and she laughed, saying that I should go home and worship the gods in the manner of the fathers of the city. When I pressed her to explain, she pointed to my garments and said that if I dressed in the manner of the founders of the city, the accidents would stop.”

Theodelinda halted for a moment and reached into a carrying bag that lay at her feet. From it she withdrew a length of cloth and passed it over to Maxian, who took it with interest. It was amazingly supple, with the finest weave that he had ever seen. A delicate pattern of images was worked into it. Unlike the moderately rough woolen gown and robe that the Lombard lady now wore, this was almost like silk.

“What is it?” Maxian asked, laying the cloth out over his knees. The feel of the fabric drew his fingers irresistibly.

“We call it sericanum, it is a weave and a fabric that my daughters devised after I managed to procure, with the help of Gregorius here, several bolts of finished silk. It is mar-velously smooth, is it not? Almost like silk, but not quite. Of course, it is made from wool and flax rather than the dew caught in the leaves of the mulberry tree.”

Maxian glanced up at the jest but saw that Theodelinda’s eyes were filled with pain rather than humor.

“Your daughters are dead, then,” the Prince said. The elderly lady nodded. “If I understand the thrust of this conversation, all of those who participated in the manufacture of this cloth are dead. Leaving you with almost nothing of what you started.”

A great pairi washed over Theodelina’s face, but she said,

“Only gold remains. I am still rich, though my house is empty.”

“Is this all that remains of the cloth?” the Prince asked.

“No,” said the quiet raspy voice of Nomeric. “That is from a new bolt of cloth. It was woven no less than four weeks ago. The weavers, at the last report, are still alive, even hale and hearty.”

Maxian slowly turned, his eyebrow raised in question. The half-completed theory that he had been slowly working on shuddered in his mind, and various bricks threatened to fall out of it. “How, may I ask, did you accomplish that?”

Nomeric smiled and deferred to Gregorius. The old man coughed, then shook his head.

Nomeric steepled his fingers, gazing at the Prince over them. “The manufacture is in a holding of my family in Siscia. In Magna Gothica.”

Maxian turned to Gregorian in puzzlement, saying “I fail to see the connection.”

Gregorius nodded and cleared his throat. “Siscia is the city the Goths built as their capital after the peace of The-odosius. It is a Gothic city, under Gothic rule, with Gothic law. It is, so to say, not a Roman city. There is no… Imperial presence there. Do you see my meaning?”

Maxian leaned back on his couch, rubbing the side of his face. With his other hand, he toyed with the length of cloth. He thought now that he saw what Gregorius was driving at. “By your logic, then, if the investment that our mutual British friend had made had been undertaken outside the borders of the Empire, it would have been… successful.”

Gregorius nodded, tapping his walking stick on the mosaic floor in excitement. “That has been my thought for some time! You see then, my young friend, why you may need help from outside the state?”

Maxian nodded, lost in thought.

Gregorius and his companions left long after midnight. Maxian was even more exhausted than before, and now he sat on the edge of his bed, the room lit only by the light of a solitary wax candle. On the little writing desk next to the bed lay a package of items that he had gathered. He knew that he should wait until the next day, after he had slept, but the curiosity that had been gnawing at him would not let him wait. He unwrapped the cloth of the package; inside were several items-a swatch of the sericanum that Theodelinda had left, the tiny lead slug from the house of the scribes, a boat nail from Dromio’s workshed in Ostia. Each thing he placed on the floor at the foot of the bed in an equal triangle, then he settled himself on a quilted rug from the chest. He considered calling for a servant to summon Aurelian to watch over him while he was meditating, but then put the thought away-his brother was busy enough and Maxian, really, had nothing to tell him yet.

He arranged himself, sitting cross-legged, and then began breathing carefully, in the manner that he had learned at the school in Pergamum. After a moment the room began to recede from his vision, then there was a sense of slippage and the vision of coarse stone and wood was gone. In its place dim shadows of the wall, the bed, the door remained, but each was an abyssal distance filled with the hurrying lights of infinitely minuscule fires. Maxian calmed himself further, letting his mind discard the illusions that his conscious mind forced upon the true face of the world.

All sense of matter was shed, leaving only these tiny rivers of fire tracing at impossible speeds the outlines of the chair, the writing desk, and the three things on the void-surface of the floor. Maxian focused his sight upon them, seeking to find their resonance. The lead slug expanded in his sight, becoming impossibly large. The whirling motes that formed its surface, to his first sight so heavy and solid, to his second a ghost, and now, to the third, nothing but emptiness filled with a cloud of fire, parted. There was a sudden sense of dissipation, and Maxian stumbled in that strange realm. Something beyond the matrix of the lead slug was suddenly drawing him, tugging at his perception and even his essential self.

Maxian willed his sight to fall back, to resume the greater vision apart from the distracting detail that formed the slug. Now he could see the resonance that echoed and impinged upon the tiny weight of lead. Wonder at first, and then a numbing horror, pervaded his consciousness. The slug, the cloth, the nail were the center of a maelstrom of forces. Dark energies of corruption and dissolution spiraled out from them, flaying at everything they touched. Now that he was aware, Maxian felt them pricking at his own core of being, like a cancer, eating away at In’s own strength and vitality.

A curse, he thought wildly, some malefic power summoned by a great sorcerer! I must destroy these things immediately! The urge was so strong that he almost cast off the meditation right there and ran with the objects out of the room. But his inner calm held, and Maxian realized with a start that his own thought and will were being bent by the forces that were collecting in the room. Destroy them, the vortex whispered, smash them, burn them up.

With a great effort, he called up the Shield of Athena, as had been taught him in his first days at the school of Asklepios in Pergamum. By this means, all dire forces could be turned away from the body of healers, allowing them to engage a diseased or corrupted form and perhaps, if they were very lucky and skilled, drive from it the deadly humors that arose in men and ate away at them from within. A shining band of blue-white flickered into being around him, struggling against and finally severing the tendrils of night-black that,had been digging into his self. Immediately he felt better, his mind clearer, his thoughts ordered and his own again.

Now he made a curious discovery, seeing the strength arrayed against him. The three objects on the floor were not the source of the corrosion that still flashed and burned against the flickering blue-white shield. Rather they had drawn it, like a shark is drawn to blood in water or the wolf to the wounded in the flock. As he watched the weave of the cloth began to unravel, breaking down into single strands, then to wisps of fabric. It will be utterly gone in a day or two, the Prince thought, marveling at the power of this curse. Even the lead of the slug and the iron of the nail were deforming under the crushing power of the black tendrils. What can give it such awesome strength? A feeling of familiarity tugged at his thought, something he had seen before…

Ignoring the three tokens for the moment, Maxian gave his thought flight and rose up in vision through the wooden timbers that made the roof of his apartments, through the floors above and then into the night sky over the Palatine and the city. From this vantage, the city was a pulsing sea of light-the people, the buildings, the river, all shimmering with their own rivers of hidden fire. And through it all, Maxian was stunned to see the blue-black power rise, swirling around his rooms at the palace like a ‘whirlpool. The curse rose from the very stones of the city, from the sleeping people, from the statues of the Forum and the sand on the floor of the Circus.

It is the city! he realized in awe. The city is purging itself of an enemy, of a… a disease.

That was what he had seen before in the third sight, the body collapsing upon a cancer and destroying it. An invader, something inimical to the body. His vision collapsed then, suddenly, and in less than a grain, he was lying on the floor of his room, bathed in sweat, his palms and forehead so hot as to burn.

THE ISLANp OF DELOS, THE AEGEAN THEME

Dwyrin woke to the wailing of slaves and the crack of the lash. His head had a strange, light feeling to it, but the riot of colors and space-bending distortions of vision were absent. He lay back on a smooth marble bench, feeling fully awake for the first time. His stomach growled with hunger and his mouth was parched, but he could think and see. A low vaulted ceiling stained with soot stood above him. Sore, he tried to move, but iron chains were shackled around his arms and legs. This is not good, he thought, peering around the room. A high window stood at the left, letting a shaft of sunlight in to light up the far wall. Through the window, he could see clear azure sky.

Other than the marble bench, the chains and the single door, the room was unremarkable. The window let in the echo of a busy marketplace, though to Dwyrin’s ear there came no sound of animals, only a multitude of voices, most raised in despair and sorrow. Coupled with the regular sound of the lash, he realized that he had not dreamed the slave ship. / have been sold into slavery, he thought dully. How will I finish my training? I have to escape from here.

There was a rattle as the bar slid from its socket, and the door swung outward. Two men entered the small chamber, one a stout, muscular tub of a man in the leggings and tunic of a sailor. The other wore a toga and sandals, tall and thin with a crown of white hair plastered against his skull. The patrician came to stand by the marble bench and looked down upon Dwyrin with limpid blue eyes, almost the color of the sky through the window. His face was as lean as his body, with a delicate nose and eyebrows that wicked up against his forehead. Carefully the white-haired man examined Dwyrin’s limbs, rolling back his eyelids and poking and prodding his extremities. The patrician kept his hands away from Dwyrin’s mouth and was very cautious. When he was done, he stepped away from the bench and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“In good health, Amochis, though your finger marks are still on his neck. The drug is still in him, so he is safe to hold here for the moment. I see no sign, not that I truly expect it, of any ‘magical’ powers.”

The sailor flushed at the dry sarcasm in trie doctor’s voice. “I saw what I saw, master, he threw fire from his hands and it killed one of my crew. Burned his head right off, it did, even under water.” The sailor’s voice was not angry yet but that was bubbling under the surface of his calm expression.

The doctor smHed, his thin lips creasing a little. “Do not take offense. I merely meant that I cannot write a certificate verifying that this boy is possessed of special talents be-‘ yond a pretty face and red hair.”

Amochis frowned at this and hooked his thumbs into his belt strap, saying “To prove it, you’d have to let the drug wear off, and then it might be you that has no head.”

The doctor shrugged, having given his opinion.

“I will pass on my report to the Master of Merchandise, though I expect that you will only be able to sell him as a link-boy or house slave. As it stands, you should move him to one of the pens. It will be cheaper than keeping him here…” A thin-boned hand with carefully trimmed nails gestured to the bare walls.

So saying, the doctor left, ducking under the lintel of the door. Amochis stood for a moment in the center of the room, glaring at Dwyrin, who had not moved or spoken during the examination. Finally Amochis shook his head as if to clear the cloud of anger that was gathering around him and stomped out, muttering. Dwyrin caught a fragment about money. The door swung shut with a heavy clang and then the scrape of the bar being shoved home. Some time passed and the slat of light from the high window drifted across.the far wall, creeping up until at last it disappeared and darkness filled the chamber. In all that time Dwyrin had lain still, listening to the constant murmur of people outside of the window. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he realized that there must be thousands of slaves outside, and hundreds of overseers.

He had heard of this place, at the school and before, when he was taken on the Imperial ship from his distant homeland to Egypt. He had come, by dreadful circumstance, to the island of Delos. The human stockyard of both the Eastern and Western empires. A tiny, almost barren island off the shore of Achaea, consisting entirely of the single largest slave market in the world. Ten thousand slaves bought and sold per day, part of his mind gibbered, and you only the latest of them. The slavers would never believe that he was part of the Emperor’s levy. If they did believe the sailor, that he was a magician, he would either be killed out of hand as too dangerous to sell or auctioned to the powerful as a freak or an ornament. Tears forced themselves out the corners of his eyelids. If only he could summon the meditations or the entrance of Hermes, he could take these shackles off. But nothing came, the preternatural lightness in his head kept coming between his groping thought and the remembered shape of the power. Night deepened and at last he fell asleep, famished and exhausted.

When the light in the window brightened again, Dwyrin woke, groggy and with a splitting headache. The lightness in his mind was gone, however, and he fumbled to bring the meditations into focus. Hunger kept intruding on his thoughts and distracting him. At last, by digging a fingernail into his palm, he managed to focus enough to bring the first entrance into focus. It wavered, though, and his concentration kept slipping away, into realms of roasted lamb, or fresh grapes plucked from the vines in the village, or tart olives fresh from the brine. He struggled through this, finally managing to reach the clarity of vision that had allowed him to see the chain link on the ship. Slowly, with many stops and starts, he began examining each link in the chains that held him to the table. His neck throbbed with pain at the strain of keeping his head up so that he could see the heavy iron bands. None of them evinced the discoloration that the one on the ship had. He collapsed back onto the hard marble, gasping with effort.

Ra had crept up to almost the window itself when the door rattled and opened again. To Dwyrin a cold blast of… something… came through it. His skin flushed with goosebumps and he turned his head, almost afraid to see what had stepped so lightly through the doorway. In his partially restored over-sight he watched in fear as the timbre of the light flexed and dimmed. Strange flows of power licked around the room, crawling on the walls like indistinct spiders. A man entered the chamber, with Amochis in tow. He was gray, and of middling height. He was plainly dressed, in a small dark-colored felt cap, a long cape and shirt, with a dark-brown tunic below. His face was a narrow triangle with heavily lidded eyes. Dwyrin flinched away from the crumbly chalklike skin, the pale eyes, almost the color of lead. Sickly white currents of power glided under and over his skin and garments like caressing snakes. He. had no smell.

“This is the slave I spoke of, master,” Amochis said in a quiet voice. Over the dead man’s shoulder, Dwyrin could see that the sailor was almost paralyzed by fear. The acrid smell of his sweat filled the room.

“Pretty, very pretty,” the dead man whispered with a voice like dry bones tumbling into the bottom of a well. “I see promise in him, buried like a hot coal. You were right to bring him to my attention, Master Amochis.” Feather-light fingers drifted over Dwyrin’s face, almost touching him, but never quite making contact. The dead man leaned over the Hibernian, his face close to Dwyrin’s chest. Dwyrin shuddered at the intimacy as the dead man began sniffing him. Up close, Dwyrin could see the tiny line of stitches that ran from the man’s neck up his throat and around the back of his skull. A scream began to bubble in his throat and he scraped himself as far away from the breathless exhalation of the dead man as he could.

The dead man smiled, the muscles of his cheek twitching like earthworms to compose his face. A narrow hand was laid on Dwyrin’s shoulder like a grave cloth settling on the newly dead.

“No, no, my young friend, do not be afraid. I shall not harm you. Lie. still and think of pleasant things. I will take you away from this place, to somewhere you will be greatly appreciated.”

The smile came again, and this time the muscles were quicker to respond to the ancient will that swam in the deep-black pools of its eyes. Dwyrin froze like a rabbit in the face of a wolf. The dark pools became deeper and deeper, like a lake draining into whirlpool. Frantically he tried to summon the Meditation of Serapis to hold his mind inviolate against the pull of that darkness. He failed, and consciousness left him again.

Dwyrin woke again in almost darkness, though now no chains lay upon him. Another ship creaked around him, and the groaning sound of ropes rubbing against the sides of the ship filled the air. A sheet covered him; by its feel against his skin it was cotton. He shuddered at the thought of being naked, either physically or mentally, in the presence of the creature that had leaned over him in the slave cell. The air around him seemed oppressive and his skin crawled with a sense of imminent danger. Very cautiously he opened his eyes and looked around. This time the chamber was not belowdecks in the hold, but it was small, low-ceilinged, and occupied only by the cot upon which he lay, a bucket, and a curved door. The wall the cot was built out from was curved as well, and Dwyrin realized that he must be in a small room wedged into the corner of a ship hull. A dim blue light shone from the edges of the door, giving him what light there was to see.

Carefully he checked his limbs, finding no shackles or chains. His clothes were gone, and he seemed unharmed.* At his neck, however, there was a thin cord of metal. Delicately he tested its strength and its feel in his hands suggested that it was unbreakable by regular means. He slowed his breathing and attempted the First Entrance. After a moment he stopped. The power, the passage that had always been there before was simply gone. Despite his best effort, despite running through the entire litany of the meditations, nothing unfolded in his mind to lead him into the overworld of forms. He fingered the cord around his neck again, puzzling at its sudden warmth.

The creak of the door and a flood of blue-white light into the room interrupted further ruminations. Squinting and raising a hand to shield his eyes, Dwyrin quailed to see that the figure outlined in that harsh glare could only be the dead man.

“Come, my young friend, dinner is set upon the table.” The half-hidden mockery present in that dust-dry voice did nothing to assuage Dwyrin’s fears. Still, there was nothing else to be done at the moment. Wearily, for his body seemed very weak, he levered himself off of the bed and crouched down to crawl out of the tiny space. Beyond, a cabin held a table bolted to the floor, a profusion of carpets and bric-a-brac, two chairs, and a number of plates and bowls. The smell of dinner slithered across the Hibernian like a snake, the prospect of food twisting his stomach but the subtle smell of carrion clogged his throat. Dwyrin took the smaller of the two seats gingerly, clinging to the side of the table as the ship rolled a little.

Even as the Hibernian seated himself, the dead man was already composed in his larger chair. A spidery hand lifted a pale-white bowl and drew back a cloth laid over it, offering it to Dwyrin.

“Bread?” the voice whispered from its bone-filled well. “You should start easy, do not take too much at once.” The bowl was placed at the side of the platter in front of Dwyrin. The boy took a piece of one of the cut-up loaves. It looked and smelled like way-bread, heavy and solid. It was not fresh. He bit at it gingerly, his tongue checking for the small fragments of stone that often survived the sifting at the end of the milling process. The bread was nine or ten days old, but still it was edible. He chewed slowly. His host watched him with interest.

“You may call me Khiron,” said the dead man, drawing a bronze goblet toward him. “You are my or, rather, my master’s property. You seem an intelligent youth, the more so for having spent time in one of the myriad Egyptian schools.” The thin black line of an eyebrow quirked up at Dwyrin’s sullen gaze. “The signs upon you are quite unmistakable, you know. The calluses of the fingers, caused by a reed pen. The inkstains on the same hands, obviously of an Egyptian source. The meditations that you summon to calm yourself, to try the exert your will over the hidden world. All of these things point to such a conclusion.”

Dwyrin did not respond, continuing to slowly chew the bread. Khiron looked away for a moment, his thoughts composing themselves. His profile was that of a hawk, with a sharp nose and deeply hooded eyes. For all his appearance, however, Dwyrin was unaccountably sure that he was not Egyptian. With his othersight gone, Dwyrin had to look very closely to see any of the signs that had convinced him before that this creature was a dead man. The skin was pale, but not with the chalky texture and graininess that it had shown in his true-sight. The long dark hair, lank and a little oily, still hung down from his shoulders, but now it did not coil with the glowing worms of power that it had before. His dark eyes were still pools of vitriol, but now they did not swim with living darkness. In his lips, there was the slightest trace of a rose blush. Then the creature smiled at him, and Dwyrin shuddered to see the pure malice and hatred in the thing for him, a living being.

“We will be in the great city in another three days,” Khiron said “and my master will take you into his House. You will be well cared for there. You shall not want for food, or drink, or attention of any kind.” The dead man leaned a little closer over the table. “But you will not have your precious freedom, though you may walk freely in the city. No, the master will be delighted to add you to his collection.” Khiron drank again from the goblet, and Dwyrin felt a chill settle over him as the touch of rose in the dead man’s lips flushed and began to spread into his cheeks.

“Eat and drink* my young friend, there is more than enough for both of us. Delos is always most accommodating in providing me with provisions.” Now the creature laughed. The sound was like babies’ skulls being crushed between iron fingers, one by one.

Dwyrin continued to chew the bread.

The ship rolled up over another swell, its sails filled with a southern wind. North it drove, through a dark sea, its oars shipped, only the hands of dead men upon the tiller.

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