Shadow of Ararat

CUMAE, ON THE BAY OF NEAPOLIS

Maxian trudged up the long pathway from the narrow, beach that lay below his brother’s Summer House. Though it had once been a rocky trail, filled with washouts and steep inclines, it was now broad and paved with fired tile. A low edging of worked stones capped the seaward side of the trail, and sconces were cut from the rocks to hold torches and lanterns at night. With each step on the cleverly worked pavement, the young Prince grew more and more despondent. Where once the trip down the hillside to the beach had been an adventure, filled with slippery rocks, startled deer, and nettles, now it was an easy afternoon excursion. All of the mysterious edges of the property were gone, carefully smoothed away by an invisible host of gardeners, laborers, and stoneworkers. Even the beach was calmed, the sands carefully raked into a pattern pleasing to the eye. Even the driftwood had been placed by the gardeners before the sun had risen.

At the top of the last switchback in the trail, the Prince turned and stared down into’the little cove. The blue-green waters glittered up at him, merry in the high afternoon sun. From the top of the cliff the wire net that closed the mouth of the cove was all but invisible, only an occasional flash off of the green-glass floats that held it up betraying its presence. Maxian fingered the tattered edge of his tunic, feeling the grit of the city under his roughened fingers. His hair was greasy and laid back flat along his. scalp. His chin was unshaven, sporting a lumpy three weeks’ growth of beard.

He laughed a little, suddenly realizing why the fishermen who guarded the cove had stared at him so, to see the Emperor’s younger brother drag in on a leaking ketch to the all but invisible sea-entrance to the summer house. Though they had recognized him, they must have thought him at the tail end of a horrendous drinking binge. His thought stilled, realizing that this was the first time he had laughed since he had left the charnel house in Ostia.

“Milord?” inquired a soft, even delicate voice from behind him. Maxian slowly turned around, his hand unconsciously brushing back the soot and grease in his hair. A slight woman with her once-blond hair bound up in a bun stood at his side, one hand outstretched in concern. Dressed in a very plain dress with muted red and green embroidery, her wrinkled face was graven deeper than usual with great concern. “Are you well?”

“Domina.” He bowed and she smiled at the gesture. “No, not well. How is the house of my brother?”

“In a great state on your account, young master. Though I hazard from your current appearance that you had not heard, your brothers have been raising a great commotion in search of you. I would wager that every praetor and civil governor between Genova and Syracuse is shaking in his boots at the invective issuing from the offices of the Emperor.”

“Oh,” he said, puzzled at the bemused look on the housekeeper’s face. “Have they been looking for me for very long?” * “Only the past ten days. Messengers come and go at all hours, bearing the dire news that you… have not been found.”

Maxian scratched his head, digging tiny bits of charcoal out of his scalp. “I suppose that they have not happened to mention why they wanted to talk to me?”

The housekeeper shook her head slowly, her bright-blue eyes sparkling with hidden delight. “Not a word.”

Now the Prince scratched his beard, finding it equally greasy and thick with minute flecks of soot. “Well, I guess I had better go relieve their concerns. Where, ah, where would they be this afternoon?”

The domina turned, looking back over her shoulder. “Where they always are, when they are here together,” she said, walking away into the shaded arbor path that wound along the top of the cliff.

Maxian shrugged. He would have to forgo cleaning up, then. Uneasy, he slouched away across the neat lawns that bordered the sprawling marble and granite house that he had grown up in. It was nearly unrecognizable to him now.

The hallways of the servants’ quarters of the Summer House were quiet and empty. As Maxian passed the entrance to the vast kitchen, he caught a glimpse of a dozen brawny men quietly eating a lunch of fresh loaves, olives, and cheese. They did not look up as he passed, his boots in his hands. At the back of the great staircase, he opened the door to the tight little stairway that predated the vast mechanism of Aurelian’s “Stairway.” The dark space under the staircase, crammed with its gears, wheels, and slave benches, was empty. There were no foreign visitors or dignitaries to impress with its smooth gliding ascent to the second floor of the house. At the top of the stairs, he paused to put his boots back on.

When he had been little, the second floor of the Summer House had been the domain of their mother, and it had been filled with women, children, looms, buckets, and a constant bustle of comings and goings. Though dogs and pets of aU kinds had been banned, it was filled with a great energy. Now the old hallways and rooms had been torn out and replaced with a stately set of rooms with vaulting ceilings, dark-colored wooden floors, and wall after wall of cunningly painted scenes. Maxian walked through the rooms, filled with furniture, clothing, desks, beds, and the dead eyes of painted figures, with a mounting sense of unease. In his current state of mind, the whispering of the living seemed to bleed from the walls and floor. A sound came from ahead, like the echo of a barking dog, and he spun around.

There was nothing. He shook his head to clear away the phantoms.

Now at the door to the one section of the old house that remained as it always had been, he stopped and cleared his mind. The Meditations of Asklepios came to him and calmed him. His fingers twisted in the air before him. Softly, with a barely audible whisper, the grime, soot, and dried sweat that had been his companions for these last days lifted away from his garments, from his hair, from his skin. Clenching his right fist, the spinning dust cloud coalesced into a hardened black marble, which he plucked from the air and placed in the leather bag at his waist. Taking a breath, he rapped lightly on the door frame.

“Enter!” came a shout from within, and he pushed the heavy sandalwood door open.

His brothers looked up; Galen thin and wiry, cleanshaven, with his short-cut dark hair thinning at the temples, Aurelian tall and broad, with a full dark-red beard. Galen grimaced at the sight of his missing sibling and shook his head. Aurelian turned, his light-brown eyes sparkling with surprise and delight. Maxian rubbed the stubble on the side of his jaw, stepping down the short flight of steps into the map room. The room, never neat, was a tumult of parchments, ledgers, half-empty amphorae of wine, wax writing tablets, and two new things.

First was a great map table, its leaves unfolded to show the entire Empire on its incised and painted panels. All of the chairs, divans, and benches had been pushed to the walls amid stacks of papyrus scrolls and dirty plates to make room. There, on pale wood, lay the breadth of the Known World-from icy Scania in the north, to barren Mauritania in the south, from the Island of Dogs in the west, to the uttermost reaches of silk-rich Serica in the east. Tiny cubes and pyramids of red clay littered its surface, clustered around the great port cities of Ostia, Constantinople, and Alexandria.

The Emperor, dressed in a red linen shirt and gray cotton pantaloons in the style of the Hibernian barbarians, stood at the eastern apex of the table, arms akimbo. Opposite him, behind Hispania and the tiny blue-tinted waves of Oceanus Atlanticus, Aurelian was perched on a high stool, one stout leg tucked under the other. One thick-wristed hand was toying with a long ivory stick with a fork at the end.

“There is some trouble afoot?” ventured Maxian, sliding into a low chair pushed against the corner of Africa. A great weariness settled over him now that he was in the safe confines of their father’s study.

“I hear tell that you were looking for me. I cannot say that I remember owing either of you a sufficient sum of money…“ A wry smile played across his features.

“Money, of a wonder, we have enough!” Galen snapped. “What we have lacked these last days is a wayward younger brother of certain useful skills. One that, by all appearances, has been crawling in the gutter with Bacchus for company.” The Emperor stepped quickly around the edges of the table, his movement quick and filled with a nervous energy.

Maxian looked up at his brother in surprise; he had not seen him so agitated in a long time. “Gods, brothers, are we at war?”

Aurelian barked with laughter, throwing his head back, teeth bright in the forest of his beard. “Ah, you give the game away, Imperial brother! Little mouse is too sharp eyed not to see your mental state.”

Swinging off the stool, Aurelian weaved his way through the tumbled debris to the cool stone and the wine residing in it. Galen, having pulled up at Maxian’s exclamation, nervously scratched his head, turning around again. The Emperor went to the inner wall of the room, where a space had been cleared among the benches and a square pedestal set up to hold the second new thing. On the stone block, a drape lay over a round object. Galen drew back the heavy wool covering, revealing a glossy plate, or dish, inscribed with thousands of tiny markings.

“Do you know what this is?” the Emperor muttered, nervous hands folding the coverlet up into neat squares.

“No, I cannot say that I do,” the youngest Prince answered. He sipped from the goblet Aurelian had given him, then choked and spit out the vintage on the floor. “Pah! This is terrible!”

He glared at Aurelian, who was blissfully pulling a long draft from his own glass. “You have the wine-taste of a donkey…”

“It is a telecast,” the Emperor said, ignoring the by-play of his siblings.

“It is very old, older than the Pharoahs, brought to Rome by the Republican general Scipio from Egypt when he was governor of that province. It allows a seer, or one with the power, to gain sight over great distances or even conversation if there is such a device where one looks upon.“ Now the Emperor was very calm, gesturing to his youngest brother. ”1 need you to make it work.“

Galen stepped aside, clearing off the table nearest to the bronze plate. Maxian stared at him in amazement, giving the wineglass back to Aurelian without thinking. Aurelian hiccuped and poured the remaining wine from his brother’s glass into his own.

“Ah, brother,” Maxian said, “dear brother. I am not a wizard. I am a healer, and not a very powerful one at that. This, this telecast, is the province of the Imperial Thaumaturges, not I.”

The Emperor shook his head, leaning back on the edge of the map table. Now his gaze, normally quick to dart about the room, settled on Maxian, and the young man felt the full power of personality that his brother possessed. Maxian shivered, their father had often had such a look upon his face. Galen gestured to the plate again. His will was not to be denied.

Maxian stood up, rubbing his hands on his tunic. Cautiously he approached the device. From a distance, it seemed a plain metal plate, save for the tiny markings. Up close, however, it was revealed to be a series of interlocking bronze rings on a sturdy stand of greenish metal. As the Prince circled it, the rings separated, brushed by the wind of his passage, and slowly spun apart from one another. Maxian pulled up short, becoming utterly still. Behind him, Galen backed slowly away toward the door.

Involuntarily Maxian centered himself and extended his sight, seeking the source of the unfelt wind that now accelerated the rings of the plate into an irregular sphere. As he did so, a dim blue light began to form at the center of the rings. No zephyr drove the whirring sphere of pale incandescence that now gleamed before him. Unconsciously he raised a hand to shield his eyes from a dull flash that he felt building in the device.

It came, filling the room with a blurring glow, and then faded. The Prince stepped forward to the edge of the stone block. Behind him he heard the shuffle of feet as his brothers raised themselves from behind the bench. A tart smell hung in the air, like a summer storm. The spinning rings were gone, now only a blue-white sphere a foot or more across, mottled with green and brown, hung in the air before them. The orb whispered, rilling the room with a barely audible hum.

“What is it?” Aurelian whispered, his eyes wide.

“It is the world,” both of his brothers answered, their voices as one.

Galen and Maxian turned, staring first at the map table spread out behind them, then back to the slowly rotating globe that was now suspended above the stone block. Half of it stood in shadow, the other half in light. As they watched, they could see white drifts of cloud slowly boil up as they grew over the Mare Internum.

Maxian leaned very close to the device, seeing the coastline of Italia inch past. He looked up at his brother, the Emperor.

“It’s going to rain in Puetoli this afternoon,” he said.

Galen blinked slowly, his face hardening as he struggled against the fear the device inspired.

“Clever.” He sneered. “Show me the Eastern Capital.”

Maxian sighed, all too used to Galen’s short temper. He backed up and slowly circled the sphere. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his brothers begin to edge back to the other side of the room. Now started, it continued to spin at an almost unnoticeable rate. Puzzled, the young healer tilted his head, trying to catch the odd thought that was nibbling at the edge of his thought.

Ah, he realized, the sphere is tilted a little around its center of spin. Odd-why would that be?

He put the thought aside. In his expanded sight, there was a faint glimmer of energy around the globe and as he approached it, it brightened. Carefully he leaned close to the sphere and concentrated on picking out the city of Constantinople, now the capital of the Eastern Empire.

The surface, of the telecast swirled and suddenly there was a great rushing sensation. Maxian leapt back in surprise, crying out and cracking his hand against the edge of the map table. A flashing afterimage of seas and lands and city walls hurtling toward him at an impossible speed faded. Behind him, his brothers had scattered at his sudden movement.

“Damn!” Maxian snarled, shaking the pain out of his hand. “That was unexpected.”

“What was?” came a muffled question from behind the couches.

“It shows us the city, brothers, but it is not a pretty sight,” he answered.

Galen placed a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder as he edged up, peering in the murky scene in the surface of the sphere. His face twisted in amusement.

“Ah, my brother Emperor is having an interesting day,” the Western Emperor said.

Constantinople was burning.