Shadow of Ararat

THE EGYPTIAN HOUSE, OUTSIDE OF ROME

H

Thunder growled in a dark sky. Lightning flashed between clouds pregnant with rain. In the face of the storm, a cold wind gusted across the arcades of the veranda around the house, driving leaves and straw before it. The trees on the hill above the house bent in the wind, and the grass on the hillside below the garden rippled in long waves with each gust. Inside, a fire burned in every room-in bronze braziers, in grates built against the outer walls, in a deep brick-lined pit that had been excavated in the floor of the basement room. In the buried room, cylinders were suspended from the ceiling, holding captive a harsh white light that shone down upon smooth stone moist with blood and salty water. In the unseen world below the stones of the house, a river of power surged blue-black, grinding against the restraint of the earth.

Fierce tentacles of blue fire rippled against a glittering shield-of rose-colored light that encompassed the house and the basement. Around the periphery of that invisible barrier, grass crisped and shriveled. Trees that had stood for two hundred years rotted away, leaving only a husk of bark and limb. Leaves that touched the ground smoked into ash, never bursting alight. Stones cracked to gravel and gravel ground to dust. Five miles away the inhabitants of the house of Junius Alpicius Niger were all struck dumb in their sleep and rose to find every animal-domesticated or not- within the grounds of their estate dead upon the ground. The sky, anguished, vomited lightning and rolling thunder against the house in the hills. The rose-colored shield held, turning aside the stabbing fingers of lightning that grasped and tore at it. The stones shuddered in time with the leaping blasts of light. In the front foyer, the face of the Alexander was constantly lit by the strobe of each strike. In that hellish light, it seemed that he smiled.

Maxian screamed aloud in torment, his fingers half buried in the chest of a small, thrashing body. Energy surged over his body like a second skin of pulsing red and deep purple. The muscles of his face, his chest, his legs twitched uncontrollably with each surge. A great triangle had been carefully cut into the stone of the floor and filled with aconite and silver. It was etched within a greater circle of worked gold. Maxian stood at one vertex, while Abdma-chus and Gaius Julius shuddered in pain at the other two. Each had stripped to only palecotton loincloths, and each lay within a three-ringed circle of colored chalk and gold wire. Snakes of ultraviolet fire hissed from their bodies, crackling and snapping. The power flooded the air and sluiced into his body through a tattoo of an inverted pyramid that had been cut into Maxian’s chest.

Within the mewling body of the tiny child, squirming in a pool of blood, urine, and feces, Maxian’s fingers danced frantically. The power he drew from the earth, from the sky, and from the dead man and all that he represented warred inside that tiny frame with a bubbling black corruption that tore and gouged at the child’s internal organs. Maxian’s face was chalky and dry, he had sweated out all the water his body could yield sixty grains ago, but despite a nearly blinding headache that sent clouds of white sparks across his vision, he continued to battle the contagion. It would not die, no matter how thoroughly he tried to drive it out. He had rebuilt entire organs from the soup of bone, blood, and tissue that churned in the child’s torso, but each one, no sooner than he had sketched it anew, began to corrupt and decay.

One hundred and sixteen grains after he had started, Maxian staggered back from a flash of black light, edged with corroded red, and collapsed to the ground. Falling, his body cut across the edge of the triangle and with a thunderclap that shook a great burst of dust from the stones of the room and broke every glass, jug, and plate in the house, the chain of ultraviolet fire collapsed into nothing. In the silence that followed even the raging storm above seemed muted and distant. Maxian moaned and rolled over, his body convulsing with the aftereffects of the procedure. On the table, the body of the infant corrupted with a slick sucking sound into a spreading pool of black-green bile. It puddled and then began to run off the edges of the table, spattering against the floor.

Still within his circle of protection, Abdmachus quivered, his mouth drooling and his eyes glazed over with pain. Gaius Julius twitched once like a gaffed river pike and then lay still. After a moment his eyes flickered open and cleared. The pain that had racked him like a lash was gone. Stiffly he sat up, his head turning jerkily from side to side. Dust puffed from his bare skin. Absently he brushed it off, leaving only clotted trails where his old wounds were damp with new blood. He looked carefully around, though he was having trouble seeing, and marked the position of the prince. The dead man considered the steps up to the house. His master was unconscious at least, perhaps dying. He could believe that the Persian was wrong, that he could have a life without the power flickering dimly in the young man, or he might collapse to dust and bones as he rode away over the hill.

Sighing, he gingerly crossed the circle and bent down over the Prince. The boy’s left pupil was huge, filling his whole eye. His breathing was very shallow and intermittent. His hands and arms were red and cracked as if they had been plunged into a fire. The Prince’s lips were blue and his pulse was thready. Gaius Julius sighed again and hoisted the boy up in his arms. When he turned toward the stairs, something sharp pricked his neck.

“An admirable choice, old man.” Krista kept the spring gun close to his neck. “Just take the boy Prince upstairs and I’ll see to him. You get to clean up down here. Make sure the Easterner doesn’t drown in his own vomit.”

Gaius Julius grunted, his left eye twitching in suppressed anger. The girl, dressed now in a simple black tunic and a midlength gray skirt, slid past him and out of his line of sight. The razor-sharp iron tip of the spring-dart traced a line along the folds of skin at his neck. / never should have caught her that day, the dead man growled to himself. / should have let her go…

Upstairs, the rain had settled into a steady downpour, intermittently lit by the rumble and crack of lightning in the hills around the villa. The dead man carried the Prince to the north bedroom and lay him in a bed that had been carted up from the city a week before at Krista’s command. Gaius Julius pulled heavy quilts over the trembling figure of the boy, while the girl relit the fires in the grate and the braziers near the windows. The heavy shutters had blown open; now she closed them again, securing bronze wheel latches shaped like asps. The sound of the storm receded and Gaius Julius suddenly felt weak himself. His hands shook as he sat down. The boy’s color had grown worse.

Krista caught the dead man’s eye and nodded.

“You will die as he dies,” she said. “I saw you thinking, down there, that you might be free. You won’t. If he dies, you go back to the worms. Do you want that?”

Gaius Julius did not answer. She met his gaze.

Finally he shook his head. “No. I want to live.”

“Then go and bring strong wine, whatever broth or soup you can find, and more firewood.”

Krista searched the other upstairs rooms while the dead man was gone, finding two more blankets and another brazier. She dragged the heavy thing, ornamented with legs carved like dolphins, their mouths holding up the corners of a fluted shell, back to the bedchamber. Her fingers were quick to sprinkle oil over the dead coals and then to strike flint. Little flames curled up and she blew gently on them. When Gaius Julius returned, laden with a stewpot, two amphorae, and three stout logs, the room was lit with a cheerful glow.

Krista broke the seal on the jugs of wine and poured the thick burgundy fluid into a shallow copper bowl placed over the nearest brazier. It steamed as it hit the hot metal. After a moment she lifted the bowl off the flames and poured it into a heavy mug of dark-green glass. A ladle of the soup broth followed. Crouching on the side of the bed, the girl peeled back the eyelids of the Prince. His skin was chalky and his breath was very faint. To her delicate touch, his face was cold as stone. Hissing in despair, she pried his teeth apart and spilled the warm mixture into his mouth. He twitched and nearly knocked the glass from her hand, but she stroked the side of his throat with her fingers.

His throat muscles convulsed and he swallowed the broth. Krista held his head up, making sure that he could take it down without choking on it. This done, she poured more into his mouth. A faint blush began to tint his lips.

“Make more,” she said to the dead man. “We give him as much as he can take.” Gaius Julius nodded and began heating more wine in the copper bowl.

Outside, the mutter of the storm continued and the streams that flowed from the hills rose steadily toward their banks, clogged with the pale corpses of fish and frogs.

Krista and the dead man sat in the bedchamber. The girl was under the covers, holding the sleeping body of the Prince close. He was still cold, but the dreadful pall had left his face and hands. A small black cat with sleek fur was curled up next to her on the pillows. Gaius Julius was sitting next to the fire, feeding small sticks into the steady flame of the logs. The twigs snapped and crackled as they were consumed. A light piney smoke drifted up from the lip of the grate. By a clever trick, the heat of the blaze radiated out into the room, warming the dead man’s cold bones, while clay pipes took the smoke away and out of the roof of the house.

“Why haven’t you left?” Gaius Julius’ voice was quiet with exhaustion and the fragile peace that had settled over the firelit room. “There’ve been no lack of chances since that day I caught you on the stairs.”

Krista considered for a moment, then said, “The day after you caught me and locked me back up, the Prince came down to see me in my cell. He told me that he and the Persian had discovered that a terrible curse lay upon everyone in the city. Only he and the Persian could know of it and live by their powers. He said that he would not tell anyone, even his brother, of what he had found unless he could lift the curse. I didn’t understand, so he unlocked the door of the cell and took me upstairs.

“There was a wicker box on the garden porch with a pigeon in it. The Prince said it had come from the city just thafday, from the palace. He wrote a little note on a scrap of paper and put it in a little tube on the pigeon’s leg. The pigeon flew from his hands, out over the garden. Do you know what happened to it?”

Gaius Julius stood, his hands stretched out to the fire. The shutters rattled a little as thunder boomed over the dark hills.

“No,” he said. “What happened to the pigeon?” Krista curled closer to the Prince, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “When it flew out of the garden, there was a dark flash, like a great bird striking. Then there was nothing but a cloud of feathers falling out of the sky. I said that an owl must have seen it, but the Prince took me to the edge of the garden, where the Persian had put those piles of stones. The pigeon was there, or what was left of it. It was already rotten with worms and fly eggs.

“ ‘See?’ he said. ‘Everything that knows this secret dies unless it is protected. The house is safe; you are safe if you are with me or with Abdmachus. There is no better cell than this knowledge.’ So, old man, I stay here, because there is nowhere to go. It is the same for you, or for the servants.“

Gaius Julius stood in the darkness by the window. He had feared as much. The confusion of plans and stratagems that had been fermenting in his mind for the last two weeks condensed, a dewdrop trickling down off a leaf to drop, a pure sphere, into a pool of still water. He turned toward her.

“There is only one thing to do, then,” he said. “If either of us are to escape this, we must do everything we can to help the boy destroy this curse.”

Krista opened one sleepy eye and peered at the old man. “Are you saying, confused old man, that we’re not doing everything we could to help him?”

Gaius Julius smiled? the firelight throwing deep canyons onto his face. “No, child, we haven’t done everything we could. If I understand this aright, we’ve only just started doing everything that we could do.”

Krista sniffed and pulled the quilt over her head. It was very late and she was very tired.

The old man sat for a time thinking, feeding the last of the twigs into the fire. He realized that this was the first time that he could remember since he had been a boy that he had actually been alone, in as safe a place as he could reasonably expect, with the time to think. The first time in many years of his memory the pressure of his dreams did not trap him. He started and stood up suddenly.

He did not dream!

Gaius Julius grinned in the dark room, a wide smile, from ear to ear. He thought back to the first moment of his new life, sprung from the moldy earth of the tomb, and realized that he had not dreamed, not once. Weeks had passed and when he closed his tired eyes, only an“ abyssal blackness waited, free of voices and portents.

“I am free,” he said aloud, but Krista was asleep and the small black cat only yawned, showing a pink tongue and white fangs before tucking its nose under its tail and going back to sleep.

The narrow valley led up onto a barren ridge. Wind whipped across the rocky summit and the Gothic bodyguards drew their cloaks tightly around them. Maxian wheeled his horse, staring out over a vast landscape of pinnacles and rounded, rocky mountains. Clouds and fog filled the canyons between the peaks, making them helmets of unseen soldiers rising from a sea of white froth. Maxian’s father ignored the cold, though it blew his fine white hair into a faint halo around his head. He pointed west, across a valley filled with smoke. Maxian turned and saw, as he had as a boy, the citadel of Montsegur, aflame.

The fortress rose, a tumble of white stone and square towers above a vast granite plug that cut into the sky. The peak it crowned was rugged and steep-sided. Only one winding trail clawed its way up the southern face, and that trail was overhung at many points by the walls high above. Montsegur rode in the sky, seemingly inviolate, but on this day it was wrapped in flame. A great tower of black smoke rose above the burning castle, and even from where he stood, a good two and a half miles away, Maxian could see the tongues of flame roaring from the windows of the towers and the central basilica.

Between the bare ridge that they stood upon and the walls of the dying fortress the air was as clear as the finest glass. Maxian could see tiny figures, each wrapped in a yellow-red corona, leaping from the walls of the citadel. Trailing smoke, they plunged down into the bosom of the clouds that swirled around the mount, vanishing like sparks into the sea. The air above the inferno shimmered with the waves of heat billowing off the limestone walls.

The elder Atreus grunted as one of the towers, outthrust from the southern wall, suddenly cracked at its base and slid, with dreadful majesty, off into the abyss. For a moment, as the entire seventy-foot structure fell, it held its shape, but then it struck the side of the cliff and exploded with a booming sound that could be heard clear across the valley. Maxian flinched back from the sound, for the volume of the noise it represented staggered him. The echoes came back a minute later from the walls of the canyons.

“Come, my son, and see the work of the Emperor.” The elder Atreus urged his horse forward, and they descended a trail of stones that cut down the mountainside across a long slope of broken shale and small round boulders.

Under the clouds the valley below Montsegur was a hive of activity. Thousands of men had hewn a sprawling encampment out of the poor soil and scrubby trees. Maxian followed his father through the camp and marveled at the. standards he passed. Four of the Legions of the Army of the West were here, each with a camp placed equidistant around the base of the peak. A road had been built across the valley and then up the flank of the mountain. As they rode through the rows of tents, gangs of workmen were raising tall posts by the side of the road, lining it on either side. Each post had a crossbar of rough-hewn pine across the top.

At the base of the peak, a raised ditch had been dug all the way around the mountain, with a parapet behind it. A palisade fence of pine logs marked the top of the earthen berm. It ran off into the rainy mist in either direction. Legionnaires manned watchtowers placed along its length. The soldiers in the towers that they rode past to reach the mountain road looked down upon them, eyes impassive in the shadows of their helmets.

As they neared the base of the mountain, now wholly hidden by the low-lying clouds, Maxian could hear a rumble of fire and cracking stone echo down from the heavens. Between the cliffs and the circumvallation was a stretch of barren soil and tufted grass. Bodies were strewn about it, some already pecked by crows. The. inner face of the gate was adorned with the bodies of two men, each nailed up to the crossbars. Maxian turned his head, unable to stomach the sight of their decayed faces. The road rose up sharply on a long ramp of packed earth. The ramp cut past the first three switchbacks of the old road.

They rode up the ramp in silence. Maxian stared around in fear. The clouds were very low now, like a wavering gray roof above them. The elder Atreus rode on, though, and Maxian kicked his horse forward to follow. The passage through the clouds was strange-the mist clutched at them, leaving trails of water on their faces. Strange sounds echoed in it and Maxian’s heart thudded-with the sudden fear that he would never find his way out of the twilight world that he had ridden into. After a time the mist began to brighten, and they ascended the second switchback above the ramp. A moaning sound filled the air, and there was the rattle of metal.

Ahead, the elder Atreus turned aside from the road and halted on the inner edge. Maxian followed suit, as did the three Goths. Within moments figures appeared in the mist, rising like the bodies of the dead from a disturbed pool. A long line of men and women, stripped naked, their necks bound with wire collars and.tied in a coffle, staggered past. Legionnaires trotted alongside in soot-stained armor, swinging spiked truncheons, urging their charges forward with the crunch of the club or a kick if they faltered. The feet of the captives were bloody and the roadway was puddled with crimson when they had passed.

Maxian stared after them as they disappeared into the mist. “Father, won’t they ruin the value with such treatment?”

The elder Atreus laughed and looked over his shoulder. “They have no value, boy, they are heading straight for the crucifix. Within the day they will all be dead, ornamenting the road from here to Narbo. More will come too, so close your heart to them.”

“Father, who are these people? Are they rebels? Barbarians?”

The governor snorted, then clucked at his horse and can tered up the road. Maxian, his face red with embarrassment, followed after.

The road became a track and Maxian and his father were forced to halt six more times before they reached the end of it. Long gangs of captives passed them, bloody, burned, their eyes vacant and desolate. Many showed grievous wounds and the bite of the lash and the truncheon. Maxian quailed away from the dead eyes that stared at him as they stumbled past. At the top of the trail, a great tower of pale limestone blocks rose up from the dark stones. The massive shape was pierced by a long tunnel, ill-lighted and slippery. At the mouth, soldiers were hauling bodies of men out of wagons and throwing them down.the mountainside. A gutter cut into the rock of the road at the lip of that black mouth was chuckling merrily with a stream of frothy red water. Bones floated past as the horses stepped over it. Maxian’s horse balked at the smell of the tunnel, but he could not allow that, so he lashed it with his riding crop and it cantered forward into the darkness.

Pale sunlight etched the courtyard beyond. The elder Atreus had pulled his horse aside and sat upon it, unmoved by the carnage that filled the space between the gate tower and the central building. Here there was no distant air to attenuate the crackling roar of the flames that consumed the basilica. Squads of soldiers in blackened armor jogged past into the tunnel, weapons crusted with gore slung over their shoulders. A centurion trotted past after the men and raised his arm in salute as he came abreast of the governor. Maxian stared up at the flames leaping from the windows of the house..

A deep grinding sound came, and then the entire upper story of the building caved in with a roar. The ground trembled at the shock, and a great burst of sparks and new smoke flew out of the top of the ruin to join the black pall that blocked out the sky. Maxian covered his face, for now hot coals were raining out of the sky and the air was thick and hard to breathe. The elder’Atreus took his son’s bridle and kneed his horse forward again. The gray mare high-stepped through the twisted piles of dead that were scattered around the courtyard, and they climbed a stone ramp on the side of the outer wall to a platform that stood on the side of the rampart.

All around them clouds and smoke billowed. The rest of the castle was aflame, with Roman soldiers running through the smoke, carrying what loot they had scavenged from the dead. The clouds had grown dark and were rising, obscuring the top of the trail and closing upon the gate. Maxian looked out over a. sea of white foam, with the hot breath of the dying castle blowing past him. His father got down and tied his horse off on a broken stub of wood at the top of the stone ramp.

“Do you understand this, son?”

Maxian swayed on his horse, near to tears. “No, Father, I don’t understand. Who were these people? Why did they have to be slaughtered in such a way? Were they rebels against the Emperor?”

The elder Atreus stared up at his son, his face bleak. “No, son, they weren’t rebels. All they desired was to live in their villages and practice their faith in peace. They harmed no one, they did good works, they raised their children to fear the gods and to be honest with men. In all Gaul and Hispania they were respected and welcomed wherever they went.”

Maxian began to cry, his voice breaking as he tried to speak. “Then why did they die? Were they bad? Why were they punished?”

•The governor stepped to the withers of the horse and reached up to take his son down. The boy clung to him and cried. The horrors of the day were too much for him.

The elder Atreus stroked his son’s hair and held him close. “Son, they died because they would not make the proper sacrifice at the altar of the Emperor. They called him a man, and not a god, so not deserving of their faith. They held to a belief that only their twin gods were worthy of the respect of worship. But the Emperor or the state cannot countenance what they did.

“You see, the Empire is like a family, and the Emperor stands at the head of the table, the leader and the protector. All look to him for guidance, for judgment. Like the father of the family, the Emperor protects the people from the barbarians and from civil disorder. Like the father, the Emperor provides an example to the young peoples who are under his protection. The Emperor judges when there are no other judges. The Emperor brings life, providing seed for each new generation. In all of this, he must be respected. He sits, as the father does at the head of the table, between man and the gods.

“But without respect, without the filial duty of his children-his subjects-the Emperor cannot govern. The father who does not have the respect of his children is weak and the family divided. The sons fight among themselves and the daughters are their prizes. There is civil disorder in the cities and mutiny in the countryside. In this matter of faith, the Empire has always been a loving father-forgiving and accepting-allowing each race of peoples under its protection to worship their own gods in their own way. But for ‘ the health and the prosperity of the family, each man and woman must also pay their respects-in the temple or the home-to their father, the Emperor.

“These men,” he said, his free hand indicating the ruined citadel, “though all judge them goodly men, refused this. They refused to respect and honor the Emperor. They refused, even when put to terrible pain, to venerate his name. They met in secret and urged others to follow their path. In them, in all seeming piety, was worse faithlessness than in any man. In their temples there was no respect, only the slighting of the Emperor’s name. This cannot be countenanced. You see their end. One that will only be whispered of in time to come. A final judgment upon them and their Persian creed.”

Maxian could not stop crying and burrowed deeper into the warm shelter of his father. The old man stood on the parapet for a long time, holding his son. The limestone walls and pillars of the ruined temple hissed with green flame and the pyre of black smoke rose higher and higher, into the darkening sky.

Krista knelt on muddy ground among the high bushes of the side garden. The day was cold and gusty, so she had tied her hair back with a scarf and wore a pair of knit breeches she had stolen from the old man. They were made of wool, dyed a dark green, and they stopped the wind far better than some flimsy tunic. She had cut an oblong hole five or six hands long out of the ground with a sharp-bladed shovel and carefully placed the turf aside. Into the little muddy hole she placed a bundle wrapped in cotton batting and string. Then she unscrewed the top of a heavy ceramic jar she had borrowed from the basement and carefully sprinkled the gray-green dust inside over the top of the bundle. There was a very sharp smell and she turned her face away while she finished. She closed the top of the jar and put it aside, then she covered the bundle with rocks.

The turf went back on over the rocks and she tamped the grass back down. Still crouching over the hole, she cleaned up the rest of her mess and put the shovel and jar back into her carrying bag. She sighed and leaned over the hidden place.

“Rest easy, little brother,” she said, and made the sign of farewell and blessing. Though the grass would soon grow back over the cut turf, she sprinkled wine and wheat grains over the grave. She hoped that the little boy’s spirit would find its way to the green fields beyond the Lethe. Then she slipped off through the bushes, heading for the front of the house. This time no one saw her.

“I fear that I am a poor commander for this desperate venture,” Maxian said, his voice still hoarse. He sat in a wooden chair with upswept arms, covered with a quilt. His face was still pale, though he had nearly recovered all of his strength. While he still looked young, there was some shadow around his eyes that made him look far older than he had the week before. Krista sat behind him, on the edge of the bed, with the little black cat on her lap. The dead man and the Persian sat in the other chairs, but only Abdmachus seemed comfortable in them. He was sitting cross-legged after the fashion of his people.

“I have put us all at risk with a very ill-considered approach at dealing with this problem. I was thinking of this… thing… as a contagion, a disease. It is not, it is a curse, a construction of forms and patterns in the unseen world. It must be dealt with as such.” Maxian raised his hand to stop Abdmachus, who started to speak.

“I know, my friend, that many other sorcerers have gnawed at the edges and come away empty-handed or dead, but this thing operates within boundaries and rules of its own. It is not a disease and I do not believe that it can be treated like one, a single patient at a time. Everything that this is fits together, like a puzzle, or the stones of a bridge. If the one keystone can be removed, properly removed, the entire edifice will come apart. I believe that if we can effect that, the entire curse will be lifted.”

Abdmachus stirred, his white eyebrows perking up. “What, Lord Prince, is the keystone?”

Maxian smiled, but he did not answer. His face twisted a little then, becoming grimmer. “I also know that regardless of how much you might praise my current powers, they are wholly insignificant in the face of what will be required. I must have access to a vast reservoir of power, far more than is contained within mere rocks and stones, or even in the three of us. Where can I get it?”

The Persian quailed at the hard stare he received from the Prince. He looked to Gaius Julius, but the dead man was smiling genially and only raised an eyebrow in question. Krista was ignoring the men entirely, for the little black cat had rolled on its back and was batting at her braids with its paws. It caught one and bit at the end of the hairs.

Abdmachus turned back to face the Prince, who was still staring at him with an almost hungry gaze. “O Prince, I… I do not know of such a power! The exhumed dead are repositories of strength, as you have seen from your experiences in the tomb. You see the pool of necromantic energy that Gaius here provides. I do not know! Perhaps another Emperor, as well loved as he? Perhaps we could‘ find the body of Augustus Octavian and…”

“Bah!” Gaius Julius’ voice was harsh in the close room. “No one makes a pilgrimage to his temple! There are no parades on the day of his birth. Do I ken you, Prince, that you need the very power of the gods? That you need enough strength to topple a mountain by pulling out the single stone at its heart?”

“Yes,” Maxian whispered, his eyes still fixed on the Persian, who was beginning to tremble a little. The Easterner raised a hand to his mouth and wiped sweat from his lip. “Yes, Gaius, I need the power of a god.”

“Well, then,” the dead man said, rising from his chair and circling behind Abdmachus, who looked up at him fearfully, “barring that we storm the gates of Olympus and drag Jupiter out by his short hairs to serve us, we must find the next best thing. Persian, you do know what that is, don’t you? And I’ll wager from the palsy in your hands that you know where it is as well.”

“What do you mean?” Abdmachus’ voice was a strangled whisper. A terrible fear had begun to blossom on his face.

“I mean,” Gaius Julius said, gently placing his hands on either side of the little Persian’s neck, “that I have read the Histories. I know that the Tomb is empty, that it has been empty since the disaster of the Emperor Valerian’s capture by Shapur of Persia three hundred and sixty years ago. I know what price Rome paid for his ransom. What I don’t know is, where is the Sarcophagus? Can you tell me that?

Can you tell me where the King of Kings, this Shapur the Young, hid it?“

“No, no! I do not know such things! They are forbidden! The mobehedan are the only ones who know such secrets! I am only a low moghan, not one of the great ones!”

Gaius Julius’ fingers, ancient and weathered like the roots of oaks, dug into the little Persian’s neck. Abdmachus squirmed as the nails cut into the nerves, but he did not have the breath to scream. The dead man leaned close, his mouth close to the little Persian’s ear. “They trusted you enough to send you here, to the heart of the enemy. They trusted you to carry their plan into the house of the enemy. You are strong enough to build the ward that holds this house safe from what must be the strongest power in the world, save the gods themselves.”

The fingers began to crush the little man’s windpipe, fractions at a time. Abdmachus struggled desperately to breathe, but there were only little gulps of air to be had.

“Where is the Sarcophagus? Tell me!”

Gaius Julius released the chokehold, suddenly, for Maxian had made a small gesture with his left hand. The Persian gasped for air. When he had recovered, the Prince gestured again and Gaius Julius, with an unpleasant smile, gave him a glass of wine. Abdmachus drank deeply and then put it aside. He glanced fearfully at the dead man but then focused on the Prince.

“Lord Prince, please, surely this is not necessary? I have served you faithfully! I am Persian, yes. I was sent here as a spy in the capital of the enemy. But I am your friend, I have thrown my lot with you! Please do not ask these things of me!”

Maxian leaned forward, his face in shadow. His voice grated like stones crushing the bones of the dead. “Abdmachus, you are faithful, but there is no way out of the trap save victory. If you do not give me freely, what I need, then I will draw it from your dead skull. Gaius Julius will take great pleasure in killing you and I will raise you up again, only wholly my creature, and your secrets will be mine. If you serve me freely, and me only, then you will live and have free will. But you must choose, and you must choose now.“

Abdmachus quailed away from the face of the Prince, but there was no respite from his will. During the Prince’s speech, the dead man had drawn out a wire-wrapped cord and now held it ready behind the Persian’s head. Krista looked up from playing with the cat, frowned, and gathered up the little creature before leaving the room.

“Lord Prince…” Abdmachus started to speak but then stopped. Fear, cunning, and despair flitted across his face, but in the end there was only hopeless resignation. “Yes, I will do as you say.”

Maxian smiled, but there was no laughter in his eyes. He rose from the chair and put aside the patterned quilt. He leaned down and took Abdmachus’ head in his hands, raising it up so that he could meet the Persian’s eyes. A hum rose in the room, like a hive of bees, and the Persian twitched suddenly. Maxian released him and smoothed the tousled gray hair back;

“Where,” said the Prince, “is this Sarcophagus?”

Abdmachus groaned and fell on his knees to the floor. A trembling hand went to his forehead and then flinched back, finding a mark there. Though he could not see it, it was that of an inverted pyramid and bound to his flesh more surely than any tattoo. Tears dripped from his eyes as he knelt before the Prince, forehead to the floor.

“I have heard that the great King Shapur took the Sarcophagus to the mobadan-mobad. The high priest had demanded it of the King of Kings as recompense for the murder of Shapur’s brothers. The Sarcophagus was taken to the East, to a hidden place, for the magi feared that their enemies would seize it from them.” Abdmachus halted, his voice weak with fear. “They built a new tomb of gold and lead to hold it, for none could open the Sarcophagus, though many tried. The greatest of the mobehedan died trying to unlock its secrets. I do not know where the great magi hid it, only that it is somewhere deep in Persia… Please, it cannot be found!“

Gaius Julius smiled now and fondly patted the head of the traitorous Persian. “Boy, nothing is impossible if a man puts his mind to it.” He looked at Maxian, who was slouched in the chair again, exhausted from his small effort. “That Sarcophagus contains all the power you need, Prince. All we have to do is find it and retrieve it.”

The dead man idly toyed with his knife. It was quite old; he had purchased it from a dealer in rare objects in the city. Now he drew the blade and the rasping sound of iron on bronze brought a sickly smile to the Persian’s face.

“Where might we find someone who knows where the old wizards took this body, Persian friend?” Gaius Julius’ bald head gleamed in the firelight as he bent close to the little Easterner.

Abdmachus swallowed and cringed away from the dead man. “Please, Lord Prince! This thing is a great secret. It is spoken of only in the barest whispers among my people. The agents of the mobehedan would murder any man in Persia who ever spoke of such a thing!”

“Then,” Gaius Julius said, sliding the flat of the blade along the Persian’s chin, “perhaps someone who is not Persian might know? An Egyptian? A Chaldean?” The point of the blade pricked at the corner of Abdmachus’ eye.

“Aaah! Please… there is a man, a man in Constantinople. He collects rare things: books, objects of art, secrets! He may know where the Sarcophagus was taken. Aaa!”

Blood oozed from around the tip of the dagger and the dead man grinned in delight.

“I have met this man before! Please, I will take you to him. If you have gold or secrets to sell, you can get anything you want from him!”

“Enough.” Maxian was tired of the game. “Abdmachus, go and see that the rooms in the cellar are cleaned up.”

Gaius Julius stared after the little Persian as he scurried out. He whistled a merry tune.

Maxian looked up, his tired eyes half lidded. The dead man was excited, even eager. This was a new thing, and something that bore watching.

“What is the body in that casket to you, Gaius Julius? It will only be old bones and dust by now.”

“I was only bones and dust, Prince, before you came and raised me up. If we can steal the body of the Conqueror, then you can return him to life as well. Is this not so?”

Maxian nodded, his face guarded. The dead man was in an unaccustomed state-he was trying to be earnest.

“Please understand, Prince, that all my life I dreamed of the Conqueror-of being him, of bestriding the world like a giant. My adult life was the execution of that dream. In the end, it destroyed me. Now, past death, those cares have passed from me, but this… this I want. I want to see him, alive. I want to speak to him. I want to stand at his side in battle.”

Gaius Julius paused, seeing the troubled look on the Prince’s face.

“Yes,” the dead man said slowly, “in battle. You know that this can only end in a struggle, one that will be fiercer than any that has gone before. A war that you will have to win if you are to succeed. But think! Think of having him to command your armies! Inhere can be no better weapon in all the world.”

Maxian held up a hand to still the words. He stood, tired and thin, and wrapped the quilt around him. He stared at the old man for a moment, then spoke. “In the morning, take Abdmachus and go to the old port of Ostia. Find a ship, a swift one. We must be on our way to the East as soon as possible. The servants and I will prepare the house for departure. Oh, and make sure that my Imperial brother does not know that we are leaving or where we are going. Be quick about it.”

Gaius Julius bowed, another unaccustomed thing for him, and left the room. Maxian went to the grate and stared down into the fire. He felt cold and empty. The struggle with the contagion had drained him terribly. His own talent flickered through his body and told the same tale that Krista had-he had come very close to death. Only her quick thinking had saved him. He wondered what he could do about“ that.

The patter of small paws made him turn. The little black cat darted into the room and jumped up onto the bed. It yawned at him, all teeth and yellow eyes, before burrowing under the covers. He smiled and shuffled back to the chair.

“Hello, Krista,” he said as he lowered himself into the cradle of hard wood.

“Master.” She came into the room, a dark ghost in black and gray. She had brushed her hair away from her face and it fell behind her in a cloud.

“Come and sit,” he said. She drifted into the room and folded herself onto the couch opposite.

“We will leave soon, for the East. Gaius Julius will go to the port tomorrow…”

“I heard.”

He paused; she was not well pleased. He decided to be blunter than he preferred.

“I owe you my life,” he said, “and I want to reward you, but those gifts that I can give are lacking. I have thought of purchasing you from the Duchess and freeing you, but since you know what we are about and what has happened, that would be freedom in name only. Until the contagion can be defeated, there is no freedom for any of us. You are bound to me, or to Abdmachus, until this is done.”

Krista’s eyes narrowed. She had already come to the same conclusions.

“So I come with you to the East,” she said in an angry voice, “and what am I? Still a slave? Half a free woman? I think-I am still a slave and will always be one.” You did not have to tell me anything about what you were doing here. You could have sent me away or let me escape. You didn’t. It’s my duty to be obliging. I’m here because you fancy my company, in bed and out. Your gratitude means nothing to a slave, for it’s the gratitude of an owner to a dog that has done well in the hunt-forgotten in the morning.“

Maxian’s nostrils flared, but he did not otherwise react. Instead, he sighed and looked away. “True. I do want your company. I do not trust the old man or the Persian. Gaius Julius would have me his slave in an instant if he thought that he could maneuver such a thing. Abdmachus-well, before tonight he thought that he was the master of the situation; now he is my creature. I desperately need someone to talk to, to trust. I.hope that would be you, if you will still come with me.”

“I have no choice,” Krista said in a resigned voice. “Outside of the barrier that you and the Persian provide, I’m dead. I want to live, so, yes; I will come with you. I don’t think that you will ever think of me as a free woman, but life is better than death.”

Inside, Maxian felt a sharp pain at her rejection. Why didn’t she understand that he wanted to help her? He just couldn’t. Not right now. But soon he would!

He turned away and climbed into the bed himself, careful to avoid the little black cat. Krista closed the fire grate part way and then disrobed. The house was silent, the only noise a patter of rain on the slate roof.