Shadow of Ararat

THE ZIGGURAT OF THE MAGI

H

Maxian and his followers entered the buried city by a hidden path. The Valach, at the bidding of Gaius Julius, had found a trail made by goats and sheep that entered the city from the north, winding its way through fallen palaces and ruined temples. The old Roman had been more than usually smug, noting that even wizards had to eat sometime. Maxian took his time, walking slowly, most of his mind submerged in the hidden world. Strange patterns and geometries filled the spaces between the buildings and even the sky above the city. The dead man had been right to counsel stealth.

The stock trail crossed a cracked mosaic floor, exposed to the sky by the collapse of the building that had once housed it. The Prince walked for a space on clouds and a brilliant blue sky filled with wondrous birds. Two of the Valach boys preceded him, sinking low to the ground, sniffing and smelling everything that they encountered.

Krista shadowed the Prince at his right shoulder. The homunculus followed, carrying the unconscious body of the Persian magician. Abdmachus had been a long time in yielding up the secrets of the ziggurat. Gaius Julius had emerged from the body of the engine with a sour, drained expression on his face and a carefully drawn map in hand. Khiron, though his chest and arms were covered with a network of fresh scratches and bruises, was unmoved. Alais had fairly glowed, her hair thicker and richer in texture, almost the color of molten gold. Krista wondered if the Prince had noticed.

The lush blonde and the rest of the Valach followed behind the homunculus, as quiet as fallen leaves. Krista moved as quietly as she was able, but anger simmered in the back of her mind at the effortless skill the barbarians exhibited. She felt heavy, weighed down by a light shirt of chain-mail links that she wore strapped around her torso under the dark colors she had lately favored. The Prince seemed to move with the same grace now, though he had never shown an aptitude before. She stole a glance over her shoulder at Alais.

The Valach woman was watching the Prince with ill-disguised avarice. Despite the threat of imminent violence, Alais had chosen to dress herself in a tight-fitting leather top that revealed just enough of her figure to excite the imagination, silk leggings, high leather boots, and the heavy dark cloak. Krista sneered inside, ignoring the fact that she had worn similar outfits herself, though in slightly more fitting circumstances.

This isn’t a summer party on the Seven Hills, she thought, someone will be dead soon… maybe a fat woman with no sense of style.?.

She missed the Duchess. Anastasia was so skilled with this kind of thing that were she here, the barbarian woman would have already fled in shame. The Roman woman smoothed her sleeves over the hidden shapes of the spring gun and her knife. She still had some small consolations.

The lead Valach stopped, raising a hand in warning. Silently he pointed to the left, into a dark recess. The stock trail turned away to the right, into a high barrel-vaulted building made of thick courses of stone blocks with bricks laid in between. The smell of sheep and goats tickled the nose. Krista watched the Prince advance carefully and confer with the two Valach boys.

“Soon,” Gaius Julius said in her ear, “there will be some blood spilled.”

Krista nodded, turning around to keep the old Roman in view. The others had stopped, the Valach squatting, Alais drifting up to the Prince, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Gaius Julius met her eye and winked, his face holding back some suppressed amusement.

Krista’s left eyelid flickered in anger and then she made a small smile. “You must be pleased, seeing battle again…”

Gaius Julius grimaced and shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I never miss war. I miss the disputation in the Forum. I miss testing my wit and voice against others. This escapade has some intrigue, but little else… I used to say that war was the recourse of the defeated or the barbarian who knew no better. If you had to fight, you had already lost your case, you see?”

The Prince hissed at them and they turned. Maxian gestured toward the dark recess. One of the Valach boys was disappearing down the flight of brick steps hidden within its shadow. Krista nodded but then held back until everyone else had gone ahead. She took one last look around, starting with alarm when a white face appeared at the doorway of the barrel-vaulted building. Then she smiled and nearly laughed aloud.

A puzzled-looking goat stared after her as she turned and descended the stairs.

Krista hurried down the stairs. At last the staircase wound to a stop and a narrow corridor split off from it. She had to bend down to keep from bumping her head against the triangular roof. The Prince had stopped ahead, his face illuminated by a pale-green light. The others were kneeling on the dusty floor.

“Ahead of us,” the Prince whispered, “is a wooden door. It is not locked, but there is a pattern on it. Khiron, take our Persian friend forward and use his hand to open the door.” The Prince smiled, his green-lit features corpselike in the darkness.

“Beyond that door is a hall. I can smell smoke. We go to the right and head for the center of the chambers. The priests will come to me, or I will go to them. Then we will settle this dispute. Remember, we need to find the Sarcophagus-so take anyone that you find alive!“

He glared at the Valach and Khiron in particular. The homunculus met his eyes with an impassive stare. The Valach boys bobbed their heads in acknowledgment. Alais smiled, her lips softly moist. Krista checked the lacings on her boots and the tightness of the leather harness she wore around her slim waist. Fingers touched each weapon and tool in turn, ensuring that they were still in place. Khiron moved ahead to the door, the body of the Persian held limply in front of him.

There was a clicking sound and the door opened, flooding the dark passage with warm orange light from some hidden fire. Khiron cast the Persian’s unconscious body aside and blurred through the opening. The Valach boys bolted into the chamber on its heels. Maxian moved forward but stopped, holding up a hand to prevent Alais and Gaius Julius from entering.

There was a savage howl and sudden screams from beyond the door. Men shouted and there was a clatter of metal and ceramics falling. The Prince, silhouetted in the doorway, raised his hand and thunder spoke, shaking dust loose from the ceiling of the corridor.

The caverns under the ziggurat were ancient broad brick-lined passages with triangular ceilings. Maxian stormed forward through them, wrapped in smoke and fire.

Khiron’s fingers dug into the dark wood of a door fifteen feet high in a wall of sandstone blocks each bigger than a tall man. Ancient oak splintered and snapped as his fingernails dug into the surface. The Prince stood back, his cloak furled around his shoulders, his eyes dark. The panel groaned as the homunculus put his shoulder and leg into it. Iron bolts quivered and then screeched in agony as they pulled out of the wall. The muscles in the creature’s back bunched and strained under his mottled translucent skin.

The bar that held the great door closed Creaked. Blood, thick and black, seeped out of the deep holes that the ho-munculus had gouged in the oak panels.

The bar snapped with a sharp report like an amphora dropped from a great height onto a marble floor. Khiron cried out, an animal shout, and tore the door out of the wall. With a heave, he cast it aside, crashing into a pottery statue of a long-dead king. Blue-white fire blossomed in the doorway and the homunculus staggered back, covered with licking flames and screaming soundlessly.

Maxian’s face contorted into a grimace and he flared his hands out from his body, palms facing forward. The blue-white flame snuffed out, a candle plunged into deep water. Khiron collapsed to the ground, a puppet with strings suddenly cut. The Prince clenched his right fist and punched in the air at the door. The remaining panel boomed and then sheared out of the wall, sending fifteen-inch iron pins spinning across the chamber. The Valach boys ducked as the bolts flashed past. The oaken door spun away into the vast room beyond with an echoing roar and smashed into a flight of steps that occupied the far wall.

Krista picked herself up from the brick floor and shook her hair out of her eyes. Kneeling, she hurriedly rewove the braid that had come loose. The Valach boys had loped forward into the great chamber, but Gaius Julius’ whistle had brought them back to heel. The Prince stood in the doorway, his arms held away from his body. Alais had moved to place the Prince between her and the room. Krista slid the long water-steel knife out of her forearm sheath for the first time. The metal gleamed in the ruddy light spilling through the doorway.

Flame roared and hissed in the great room, rushing up from two rows of pits along the walls of the chamber. Between each pit, statues of frowning men in long robes rose up to the murky roof. The men on the right-hand side were clean-shaven with high foreheads. The men on the left were scarred and ugly, their faces distorted with rage. The floor between the rows of statues gleamed with polished hexagonal tiles. The shattered door had sprayed wooden splinters and chunks of oaken panel across the space. At the far end, the entire wall was a staircase rising up to some other level, currently unseen.

The three old men who had confronted Gaius Julius on the ziggurat stood on the steps, the hot wind from, the fire pits ruffling their beards. A few servants were arrayed at the base of the steps, though the scything door had pulverized two of them, leaving a bloody smear of limbs and intestines on the floor. The Prince descended the short flight of steps inside the shattered door, his own followers spreading out in an arc behind him.

Krista stepped through the door and slid to one side, vanishing into the murky shadows at the fringe of the room. While the Prince advanced slowly across the broad floor, she flitted through the space behind the statues, feeling her way through the darkness between the bands of illumination. The rumble and roar of the flames was constant, filling the entire vast room.

“We bade you leave this place.” The voice of the walnut-hued man rumbled out above the hiss of the flames. “Yet you come against us with steel and claw.”

Maxian stopped, looking up at the old men. In the unseen world, each was a haze of brilliant, coruscating geometric forms. Patterns flowed into almost definable shapes and then contorted again. They were strong, but he could feel their fear through the barriers and shields they had raised against him. He wondered that there were so few of them. The chambers through which they had passed to reach this place, the sanctuary of the Fire Temple of Ahura-Mazda, were rich and vast. Hundreds of priests could have labored here, not merely three.

Your brother’s war drew them away, whispered his memory. They are fighting in the north.

The Prince smiled.

“I sent my messenger in open embassy,” he replied, voice echoing from the looming figures of the statues and the unseen, distant roof. “He was refused, and rudely too. I will not be denied, for what you hold you hold as thieves, stolen from its rightful place. I would look upon the face of the Conqueror with my own eyes. You cannot gainsay me.”

The shock in the three men was visible even to Krista, who had reached the end of the room. A hidden stair rose up behind the last statue and she crept up it, her hands outstretched in the dark, feeling across the dusty bricks.

The eldest man sagged for a moment, then stood forward, his shoulders stiff. “It is our charge to protect that thing of which you speak. Many have attempted to divine its secrets and all have failed. You.shall fail too, but we will deny you even the attempt.”

The old man struck the stones under his feet with his staff, a sharp cracking sound. The others raised their hands and a buzzing moan echoed from their mouths. Maxian felt the hidden world convulse and quake around him. The floor trembled and the fire in the pits suddenly died. The Prince raised his hands and spoke three words.

Lightning leapt from his hands, curling and snapping through the air. Alais and Gaius Julius, who had run forward to stand beside him, screamed in pain as the chain of lightning rushed over their bodies. The Valach boys screamed in panic and fear and bolted for the door. Ultraviolet fire crawled over the Prince, sparking from his eyes and open mouth. Behind him, at the doorway, the little figure of Abdmachus, forgotten since the kitchens, cried out in fear. The ring of lightning had leapt to him too, including him in the whirling arc of power.

The floor fell away as a series of great pits opened under the Prince and his two servants. Fire raged below, leaping high and sending streamers of flame high into the air. A molten pit seethed and bubbled below them. But the Prince did not fall. Blue lightning trembled in the air around him, raising the three of them up. The tiles had rotated away, leaving narrow walkways honeycombing the floor. The three old men cursed violently as the Prince and his servants alighted on the nearest one.

Maxian laughed and drew the seething power in the dead man, the animal woman, and the Persian into his heart. A wind howled into being around him, lashing his hair, and a sphere of pale-violet light sprang up. The old men raged, their ancient fingers stabbing toward him, but the torrent of flame they called forth was swallowed by the sphere or splashed away from it to fill the air with a hideous burning fog.

Krista fled up the stairs as the air behind her incandesced and was consumed. Wind blew past her in a rising shriek as the atmosphere of the great chamber was exhausted by the conflagration. At the top of the stairs there was a flimsy door of cottonwood panels that flew apart in the rising wind. She shoved the broken door aside with her shoulder and darted ahead. The room at the top of the great stairs was the temple itself, a great hexagon around a single pillar of fire that twisted and burned. Altars ringed the tracery of pure white flame. Six pillars circumscribed the room, and rich silk tapestries hung from floor to ceiling between them. The floor was slippery and she skidded to one side, fetching up against one of the altars. It was very smooth, almost slick to the touch, under her hand. She stared around in amazement.

The floor was glass, a surface as still and smooth as a forest pool. The altars were polished Minoan marble, so well cut that it seemed to be translucent. The tapestries were woven with gold and silver wire, each one depicting a shining being with golden wings. Krista ignored all of that, though later she could remember the room as she had first seen it with complete clarity.

The floor jumped and there was a vast boom. Krista rolled across the floor into the shelter of one of the altars. One of the old men flew past from the entrance to the greater room and struck a pillar with a bone-snapping crunch. The body slid to the floor, leaving a glistening track of dark red on the marble fluting. Another of the priests staggered back, his face bleeding from tiny cuts, the air around him flaring with shock after shock against the half-seen geometries that protected him. As Krista watched, holding her hands over her ears to try to shut out the thunder and lightning crack, the air sparkled, and a fluid twelve-sided lattice crystallized out of the air. Then the lattice broke apart, raining pale-green fragments to the floor. The priest shuddered, clutching his chest. There was a liquid popping sound and he fell bonelessly to the tiled floor.

The air around her trembled and Krista risked peeking over the top of the altar. At the top of the steps to the great room, a wall of darkness shot with flickering blue lights had sprung into being. The oldest priest skipped back from it and then turned to run. Krista rose up off the floor, her left arm arrowing out. As the priest ran past the altar, her forearm caught him across the chest with a jarring shock. His eyes widened in complete surprise as his feet flew out from under him and he slammed onto the floor. In one movement Krista was down, her knee at his throat and her right hand reversing the knife. The old priest was gobbling with fear when she rapped him hard on the side of the head with the pommel. His eyes rolled up and he went limp.

Silence suddenly filled the temple room and Krista’s ears were ringing. She dragged the old man’s body aside and tied him securely with cord from a pouch on her belt. Her fingers tore a strip of his robe off, and she wadded it up to gag him.

The wall of darkness cracked open soundlessly, but as it faded away, the roar of flames from the fire pits inundated the room. Maxian staggered through, his face haggard. Ga-ius Julius held him up, his wiry arm around the Prince. Alais stalked ahead of them, her face lit with an inner fire. Her cloak was gone, torn away in the violence of the struggle against the priests. The red-orange light of the great room outlined her, raising highlights on her legs and arms.

She danced forward, her spear whirling around her.

Krista brushed her hands off and stood up.

“It’s over,” she shouted, over the hiss of the flames. “The last priest is here.”

Maxian grinned out of a soot-stained face, then his eyes rolled up and he fell heavily against Gaius Julius’ side. The old Roman eased him to the floor, the glare of the flames casting his lined face in deep relief. Alais swung the spear to a stop, pointed at the floor. She slide sideways up to Krista, who met her feral gaze with a slight smile.

“Oh, my dear,” the blond woman purred, “I thought that you had fallen to your death. It’s so good to see you alive.” Krista smiled back, baring her teeth, white and sharp, though not so long as Alais‘. “It’s good to see you too, have you fed well today? Not so feeling so… ancient?”

Alais snarled at the snap in Krista’s voice. The spear swung up off of the floor, but Krista stepped forward, inside the weapon’s reach. The knife had reappeared in her hand. “You know what the Prince wants. He won’t be pleased when he finds that you’ve slaughtered most of the inhabitants of this place…”

“I know what the Prince desires,” Alais shot back, her voice low and filled with a palpable chill, “and unlike you, I give it to him.”

“I’ve no time to time to discuss your fantasy life,” Krista said, her eyes glinting. “We have work to do.” She pushed past the blond woman, suppressing her surprise at the corded muscle she felt under the lush flesh. The prince was on his back and Gaius Julius was chafing his wrists.

Krista squatted beside the old Roman. “What is it?” Her voice was even, but concern leaked through. The dead man looked up, his eyes filled with fear. “Breaking the last barrier was too much for him,” Gaius Julius whispered. “He is cold, too cold…”

Krista frowned and took the Prince’s head in her hands. He was cold, like ice. She cursed and felt for his pulse with her fingertips. “It’s like the time before, when he carried too much of the power through his body. We’ve got to get something hot into him, some broth or soup.“ Krista stood, staring around in dismay. The great room was a sea of fire, cut only by the narrow honeycombs. Carrying the Prince out that way would be very dangerous. The temple room offered nothing. Her forehead creased in concentration. The priest was running away, she thought, heading for something… She spun around.

Alais was rising from the body of the old priest, her face flushed, her eyes glittering. There was a streak of blood on her cheek, dark and smoky against the pale cream of her flesh. Krista snarled, feeling a hot rush of rage suffuse her. She took two swift steps and her hand, stiff, lashed out, clipping the Valach woman on the ear. Alais’ head snapped sideways and she skidded into the nearest altar.

“Fool!” Krista snarled. “He was the only one who knew the secrets of this place!”

Alais sprang back up, her face contorted in anger. Her long white teeth gleamed in the firelight. Krista dropped into guard, her knife dancing in the air in front of her. Alais blurred forward, quicker than any cat, curved claws snapping out from her fingers. Krista blocked right, chopping down with her hand, and stepped into the charge, her left elbow smashing into the Valach woman’s face. Alais howled in agony and rolled away with the strike.

Behind them, as they circled, Gaius Julius strained to drag the Prince away, into the shadows.

Alais lunged, her claws gleaming ivory in the ruddy wine-colored light. Krista skipped back, her knife still waving in the air. She felt a pillar behind her and leapt into the air, her left leg snapping out at Alais’ head. The Valach woman ducked and her claws slashed at the inside of the Roman’s thigh. Krista came down out of the kick and her right hand, the knife pointed downward, caught the blow. Alais howled in pain as the steel bit at the webbing between her fingers.

Krista sprang away from the pillar at her back, hitting the ground and rolling up, facing the way she had come. Alais sidled to her left, crouching low, firelight gleaming off her sweat-slick breasts. Krista lunged in, feinting with her knife. The Valach woman danced aside and uncoiled a kick of her own. A steel-tipped heel grazed Krista’s head as she whipped away. The edge of the sharp metal tangled in her hair for a moment, cutting the leather fillet that held it back.

Krista danced aside from another lunge, her hair spilling out behind her in a dark waterfall. Her foot found the top of the steps. Alais suddenly fell back and Krista advanced a step, away from the steep slope of the stairs. The Valach woman snatched up her spear from the floor. Krista felt a wash of chill fear, but she had time to snake a curved iron hook from her belt. It was attached to a length of twisted, wire-cored rope wound around her waist. Alais advanced, the spear whirling in her hand, whistling through the air.

Krista skipped back, furiously unwinding the rope from her waist. The Valach woman shrieked a hair-raising yowl and leapt ahead, the spear blurring in the gloom. Krista swayed sideways, the leaf blade cutting the air where she was. She jumped forward, whipping the iron hook out and snapping it back. Alais ducked the flying hook but screamed in pain when it buried its head in her shoulder as Krista dragged it back to her in one motion. Blood foun-tained and Alais roared in rage. The Valach woman snapped the spear sideways and caught Krista in the chest.

Breath exploded out of her as the ironwood shaft cracked two ribs and flung her sideways into the pillar framing the steps. Krista’s head rang like a gong and her nerveless fingers dropped the knife. The wire rope was still curled around her right arm, and it tangled the Valach woman. Alais, weeping with pain, dug the hook out of the flesh under her shoulder blade. Her hand gripped the rope like iron. Krista struggled to rise, but her vision was blurred. Two, then three, blond women with bare skin slick with blood wavered before her.

Alais yanked on the rope and Krista flew toward her. The Valach woman’s right hand caught the Roman girl out of the air, her talons digging into Krista’s throat. The Roman gagged, feeling cartilage crunch under the incredibly strong fingers of the barbarian woman. She clawed at Alais’ eyes,, but the Valach held her at arm’s length, feet kicking fruitlessly at the air.

Alais laughed, her voice thick with rage, watching the Roman struggle in her grasp.

Krista’s fingers dug into the Valach woman’s shoulder, trying to pinch a nerve, but the corded muscle was like granite under her nails, shrugging aside her pitiful efforts. There was a roaring sound in Krista’s ears and darkness seeped into her vision. The barbarian woman, her pale face split with a terrible grin, receded into a tunnel of swirling gray. Krista flexed her left arm and the spring gun was in her palm. She thumbed the catch.

A six-inch iron dart suddenly sprouted from Alais’ left eye in a fountain of blood. The burnished metal crackled with green fire as the spell that Maxian had placed on it so many weeks before discharged. Green light flooded out of the Valach woman, blazing in her eyes and mouth. Alais seemed to be screaming, but Krista couldn’t hear her. She felt herself falling and then the marble floor embraced her with a sharp crack.

Gaius Julius approached the two bodies tentatively. He had dragged the Prince out of the way and had watched the, remainder of the fight with a calculating eye. Krista lay sprawled on the steps, halfway down. Alais, curled into a tight ball, was at the edge of the platform. The green fire had faded, leaving her eyes hollow. The dead man knelt at her side and brushed the shriveled hair away from her face.

“Too greedy, little cat,” he whispered. “Too much cream…”

He walked down the steps and knelt by the Roman girl. She still had a pulse, though swelling purple bruises marred the smoothness of her neck. Gaius Julius shook his head, wondering what to do. He thought of the Prince and his own fragile mortality and then stood up.

Alais was light, her body boneless and limp, as he carried her down the steps to the edge of the pit of fire. The roaring flames had been dying down since the walnut-hued man had perished. Still, the nearest pit was filled with sullen coals and a fierce heat. He raised the body over his head and then threw her forward. The blond woman plummeted down and was enveloped by the fire. Smoke billowed up in a dark cloud. Gaius Julius watched the smoke rise to the ceiling and then turned back to the living.

Behind him the fires guttered down, casting long shadows over the shattered statues. Heads peered out of the darkness, lying sideways amid a rubble of arms and stones. At the far end of the chamber, beyond the honeycombed pits, Khiron stood silently, waiting for the command of his master, holding Abdmachus by his neck. The Valach boys, cowed and whimpering, crouched behind him. The eyes of the homunculus were dark pits filled with guttering flame.

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