The Storm of Heaven (113 page)

A thin tracery of fire appeared in the air, circling Zoë's head. It rippled with white and blue, crawling through the air. She was crying too hard to notice, but the glowing worm spun out from her, encircling the sarcophagus, the bier, then the whole tent. Outside, unheard, there was a shout of alarm. "Why are you gone?" Zoë could barely speak. "I just found you, my dear friend. Is this your God's work? This cruelty? Does he love you more than I do? Is he jealous?"

Fire burned in a trembling sheet, surrounding the tent, lighting up the entire interior, glowing through the cloth walls. Waves of heat washed over her, drying her tears. Zoë looked up, startled by the brilliant light, and stared at the wall of flame, puzzled by its unexpected appearance.

"Zoë!" Distantly, she heard Odenathus calling out to her. She turned around, seeing the wavering figure of her cousin through the leaping, silent flames. "Zoë!"

Scowling, wiping tears away from her eyes with the back of one hand, the Palmyrene woman pressed her other hand towards the ground. With the motion, the fire settled, sinking into the earth. The light dimmed, then went out, leaving the night darker than before. Outside the tent, some of the Sahaba gathered, gawking. Odenathus waited just outside the ring of smoking ground. He stepped into the tent, alarmed. Zoë made a face at him and turned away. The onlookers, seeing the look on her face, quietly slipped away.

"Zoë... what are you doing?" Odenathus leaned against the sarcophagus, trying to see her face. He sounded worried.

"Go away." Zoë wiped her eyes again. "I would like to be alone."

"No. You've been hiding in your tent for days. I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?" She turned again, keeping her face averted.

Odenathus sighed, sitting back on the edge of the sarcophagus. His foot tapped restlessly against the heavy wood. "Do you want me to come with you to Palmyra and Mekkah?"

Zoë faced him, her arms crossed. "You don't need my permission to stay here with Khalid and the army. They will need you, I suppose. The Romans still have some thaumaturges. You're pretty strong now... you could help them."

"Zoë, I do need your permission." Odenathus was very serious. Zoë lifted her head in question. "You are queen of the city. I am in your service. By your decree in the ruins, I command our paltry forces." He made a half-smile, long face brightening.

"Yes." Zoë sighed. "You are my subject. But I have already decided to set aside this crown, for all its riches and glory." A wry, deprecating tone crept into her voice. "Where is the empire of Palmyra? Where are the courtiers, the glorious city, the thousand maids and servants? I rule a ragged band of refugees, some ships, a great deal of broken shale and desert sand. I will not command any man or woman of the city to follow me. Shadin has volunteered, and his service I will accept."

Odenathus' expression changed subtly, growing sad. "You won't stay?"

"Here?" Zoë laughed, a silvery sound like icy water rushing over tumbled polished stone. "This is a dreadful country!" Something like a smile crept into her face, crinkling the corners of her dark brown eyes. "You have more here than I—Khalid and this band of brothers. The war."

Odenathus nodded, looking at the ground. "Do you remember when we reached Antioch after the Persian campaign? You were going to stay in the Legion—you thought it suited you. I was going to leave, to go home and get married! Now, everything is reversed."

"I'm not going to get married," Zoë said in a very dry tone. Then her voice softened. "Have you found what you were looking for?"

"Yes." Odenathus looked up, a plaintive expression on his face, half-confidence, half-remorse. "Do you suppose that our battle-meld will still hold, even with so many leagues between us?"

I think so,
she thought, and he smiled, hearing her in his own mind.
You should go back. They are still arguing... I suppose Khalid will win in the end. He will be the
kalif
, the successor.

Yes.

Zoë stepped close to her cousin, kissed his brow, then hugged him fiercely. After a long moment, they stood apart. Zoë did not watch him leave, turning instead to the cloth-wrapped body of Mohammed. Exhaustion crept upon her, making her arms and legs heavy as lead. She wanted to look upon his face, to see the proud brow, the noble nose, one last time. She yawned tremendously.

"It can't be that late," Zoë said crossly, raising a hand. The lamps died. Darkness folded around the tent. She could see the moon, a half-crescent dipping behind the pines. "Oh, it is late."

The thought of crossing the camp to her tent was too much for her. She laid down on the ground at the foot of Zenobia's sarcophagus, curling up, cloak laid on the ground as a bedcloth. Within a breath, she was sound asleep. A little time passed and then there was a clacking and a rustling in the casket. Something moved, sounding like a great number of crickets and beetles trapped in a stone bucket.

Sleep, daughter, sleep. All these foul dreams will soon pass away. Sleep and dream of delightful things. Dream of home.

Shadows crept across broken earth, oozing among the fallen. Shade gathered in the moat, among rotted corpses and crumpled armor, until the ditch was brimming with night. Above, on the walls and towers around the gate, torches fluttered. Many eyes peered down from the battlements and from arrow slits. Despite weariness, the watch from the towers did not waver. The men of the city expected an attack.

Yet no one marked the appearance of a slim figure among the pooling shadows. It came swiftly, drifting across the road, and stopped just outside the pale flicker of the torchlight. Subtly, night deepened around the figure. A soft rustling echoed back from the massive wall, but even that sound failed to reach the ears of the men watching above. Lord Dahak knelt, dark cape clinging to thin, bony shoulders. Here, hidden by the shroud of night, he did not bother to maintain even the simplest disguise. Fine scales glinted in the web of his fingers as they placed a stone box, only a few inches long, on the ground. The Lord of the Ten Serpents grinned in the darkness, and he felt
strong
. His passage across the battlefield refreshed him, and his deft victory over the Voice of Heaven put chill joy in his heart. Tonight, with his armies everywhere victorious and his enemies in disarray, Dahak knelt on the cold earth and opened the stone box with anticipation. Before he had stepped beyond the threshold and looked upon the face of his master, the still-human sorcerer would have been paralyzed by fear. Even seeing such a box, looking upon such loathsome glyphs, holding such a foul object up to the sky would have been impossible.

In the box were two gleaming white pearls, each the size of a thumb. They nestled in silk within a cage of lead and gold. The inner surface of the box was etched with dozens of tiny, almost invisible signs. Dahak let the box lie open for a moment, long fingers pressed to his temples, his attention carefully directed elsewhere. Any adept would quail away from the vortex of forces rushing and rippling in the hidden world. Enormous pressures gathered, the warp and weft of the entire earth pressing against the box, trying to drive the twin spheres from existence. Shining gradients deepened, and Dahak felt his own power pressed aside by a deluge of singing threads eager to annihilate the pearls. The stone box began to sink into the earth.

The ground groaned, but the watchers ignored the slight rattle running the length and breadth of the city. Earthquakes were common along the Propontis. Dahak walked away from the gate and the box, which vanished beneath the loose soil. With each step he took away from the pearls, the pressure in the air lessened and his step was quicker. Curious, the sorcerer let his perception expand. After a moment, Dahak smiled. Far away and deep beneath the earth, something was stirring, uncoiling and rising from dark places. A thin, keening wail rippled through the ether, monstrous children crying out for an even more horrific parent.

The Lord of the Ten Serpents looked over his shoulder at the looming walls of the city. He laughed softly at the impudence of the builders. Men thought they were lords of the world. They were wrong. The hidden masters, those like the abyssal shape Dahak served, truly moved the heavens in their courses. As he turned away he paused. At the edge of perception, something winked and flashed like a golden coin spinning in daylight.

Dahak's eyes, gleaming in the darkness, widened. His head came up sharply, as if he scented something in the air. There was a brief impression of spinning bronze and a lambent, cold green flame. A long, excited hiss whistled through the sorcerer's teeth.

An Eye of Shadow!
he thought, avarice and delight stirring in his cold heart.
They were not all destroyed? Ahhhh...
Base thoughts stirred in the old, old brain of the creature. Clawlike fingers scratched restlessly at a glassy scar on his chest. The bite of the flint knife had been deep.
Perhaps... no, surely that door is closed! The Sisterhood would not be careless, leaving such a prize within reach...
Lids dipped over his eyes, flicking open and closed, one by one. He rummaged through ancient memories, turning them this way and that like discarded trinkets found in a rubbish pit. Was there gold among the dross?
They sealed the land in water, to keep my hands from the burning stone,
Dahak remembered, even the language of his memories changing as he reached back across an abyss of time.
But with an Eye... an Eye to see all that is hidden, I might reach Atlas' drowned halls without danger.

Very deep in the mind of the sorcerer, far below any thought that he might allow himself to peruse, the thought of freedom kindled and a fingertip, sharp as knapped flint, scratched again at the glassy scar. Shadows folded around Dahak and he slipped away into the night.

Late-afternoon sun gleamed from columns arrayed across the temple of the Divine Claudians. Atop the triangular pediment, dozens of brightly painted statues glowed in the direct light of the sun. Below the flight of white steps, a busy flood of humanity thronged the avenue separating the Palatine and its confusion of red-roofed palaces from the Caelian Hill and the temple. High on the side of the Palatine, below a monumental platform built by Emperor Septimus Severus to hold his new palace, the window of a third-floor apartment was open.

The reflected light made a bright rectangle on the wall opposite the window. The room was hot and dim. Maxian slept uneasily, his dreams troubled. His feet twitched and hands trembled, sometimes grasping at empty air. Linen sheets and a woolen blanket were scattered on the floor.

Across the little valley, a gong rang in the nave of the temple, signaling the end of the day. A reedy chorus of oboes followed and then the priests, their robes carefully arranged, tall hats on their heads, began to descend the steps, hands filled with offerings, with smoking incense on silver platters, with bundled rods and portraits of the great emperors. The procession turned upon reaching the avenue and walked north in a stately manner. The nine priests wound through the crowded avenues and into the Forum, where the temple of the Deified Caesar stood at the edge of the great public square.

In the dim room, Maxian's eyelids suddenly opened and he shuddered from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. A wild look of rage and delight entered his face. With effort, he rose from the bed. The Prince cast about the room, legs weak. There were only two sleeping couches, an end table and a leather trunk. On the top of the trunk was a wooden tray with a strigil, a shaving razor, some soap and a basin for water.

Maxian crept towards the trunk, hand trembling, and seized the razor. He stood, swaying, and fumbled the bright metal to his neck. His fist clenched, tendons standing out, and the blade cut into his neck with a sharp, sawing motion.

"Here now!" Gaius Julius bustled into the room, then leapt to the Prince's side. His ancient hand, suddenly swift, seized Maxian's wrist. Gaius cried out, alarmed at the terrific strength in the Prince's grip, but managed to jam his own hand between the razor and Maxian's carotid. "Lord Prince! What... are... you doing?"

Maxian's face contorted into a terrible grimace, turning red, veins throbbing in his forehead. The razor bit deep into Gaius Julius' palm. Pale, thin blood bubbled out of the wound, but Gaius, his ancient frame filling with unexpected strength, pressed back, digging the fingers of his other hand into the Prince's wrist. For a moment, the two men swayed back and forth, struggling, and then the old Roman kicked the Prince's leg and Maxian was thrown to the floor.

The razor flew away, clattering off the wall. Gaius Julius tried to jam his elbow into the Prince's neck, pinning him, but the younger man twisted away, sending Gaius flying into the sleeping couch with a bang. The old Roman scrambled up, his toga completely awry, tensed for battle. Maxian stared at him, his face blank. Then the Prince put a hand to his neck and it came away damp with blood. "Gaius? You cut me?"

"No." The old Roman breathed a sigh of relief, seeing Maxian's familiar expression in the younger man's face. "You were trying to cut your own throat."

"I was?" Maxian looked around the small, bare room. "What is this place?"

Gaius Julius laughed. "Some rooms of mine. Do you remember collapsing on the roof of the Flavian?"

"Yes..." The Prince stared at his hands, at the blood, then down at his naked body. "I was in the court of the dreadful king. His eyes struck me... I was destroyed, reduced to atoms." He laughed. "But I am alive. I am still alive!"

"Yes, you are." Gaius stood up. He stretched his arms and legs, bending his back. "Thankfully, you are alive and yourself again. Please, my lord, don't hurt yourself. I'm not sure if my social schedule can afford such a blow! Do you remember anything else?"

Maxian shook his head sharply, then brushed his ear with a hand. "There were many voices, like flies buzzing. I remember... they were trying to tell me something, something important. Ah, it is gone now."