Written in the Ashes (43 page)

Hannah smiled at him and his talent, and went on playing the playful melody as she sang and smiled at everyone. When it ended they each bowed to her and clapped in appreciation.

“Oh, let us have another!” said Sofia.

“Very well,” said Hannah. She sang many more songs that evening, well into the night, as her audience was unwilling to let her conclude. Hannah played song after song, finding that there was immense happiness in that night, more than any she had known since her father’s death. Eventually she just let herself be swept away by the music, and the festivity of Sofia’s return, and Alizar’s joy in it.

So.

The party went on until birds could be heard twittering in the trees. Hannah stood at the door and enfolded Sofia in her arms. “I am so happy to know you,” she whispered, and kissed Sofia’s cheeks.

“Hannah, speak to my father. He will help you,” whispered Sofia as she kissed Hannah’s cheeks in return. Hannah nodded, and then Synesius took Sofia’s arm and led her into the street.

Hannah felt her eyelids getting heavy now that the music had left her and so she turned back into the house with a yawn. Her thoughts were trained on the bed laid out for her in the warm stable straw when a strong hand caught her elbow.

“Hannah,” said Gideon, letting go her arm. He was standing so close that she felt his breath on her lips.

She smiled at him. He had been so wise to follow her to Delfi from Athens. She felt thankful.

His dark eyes found hers, searching her face, and then he opened his mouth as if he had more to say.

She dropped her gaze.

“Thank you for the music,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Hannah. “It was a wonderful party.”

Gideon smiled as if he had a secret. “Goodnight, goddess.” Then he strode down the street toward the harbor.

Hannah shut the door and swept through the atrium toward the kitchen and the stables beyond, her poise undiminished even in fatigue.

“Hannah?” Alizar stepped before her from the lower hall.

Hannah stopped, the smile Gideon’s kiss had brought still pressed to her lips. “Yes, Alizar?”

“I should like to see you in my study.”

Creases appeared in her brow. “Immediately?”

Alizar shook his head. “Tomorrow. Get some sleep. Come in the afternoon. There is much to discuss. Bring the tablet with you.”

Hannah nodded.

She left the hall and went out to the stables, where she passed several hours beside the Emerald Tablet unable to sleep, then slipped in and out of dreams that were neither real nor unreal, but in some ways even more full of feeling than she had ever known in life. She became a boar being chased on the hunt, then transformed into a horse, trying to outrun the same predator that was gaining on her. She darted this way and that but there was no shaking him; she was attacked with a roar, the predator’s claws raking her skin. She awoke with a jolt, breathless, and pulled her shift around her body and went to splash water from the fountain on her face. Then she went straight to Alizar’s study without delay.

He was still in his morning robe although it was now early afternoon. He was enjoying a bowl of hashish. “My dear,” he began. “Have you brought with you the tablet?”

“I have brought what the Pythia gave me.” Hannah took a step forward and set the lower half of the Emerald Tablet on the worktable, bundled in the burgundy linen. She nibbled on her lower lip and looked out the window at the clear bright sky above the city. “You may see for yourself.”

Alizar unwrapped the bundle and regarded the raised script with interest. When he pulled the cloth back completely, he saw the jagged break that Gideon had spoken of when they first returned. “So this is only half of it. This alone will not be enough to aid Orestes. Now that Rome has fallen the pagans would unite if we had the entire tablet. They want to appease the angered gods. But I fear without the other half we have nothing.”

“I was told we must retrieve it from the oracle of Amun-Ra.”

Alizar nodded. “I wondered if the Nuapar would be as careful as this.” He touched the strange, mystical lettering on the tablet.

“What does it say?” asked Hannah.

“It reads: ‘Ascend from the earth to the heavens. Extract the lights from the heights and descend to the earth containing the power of the above and the below, for it is with the light of the lights. Therefore the darkness flees.’ And there is more, but it will not help us without the rest of the tablet intact. You see, the script is already known by the Kolossofia, but the legend is that the script alone does not have any effect without the Emerald Tablet. That is why they sent it to be protected by the oracles—so that its magic could not be used for evil.”

“What is its magic?” asked Hannah.

“The tablet promises to make its interpreter immortal,” said Alizar. “And beyond that, as I said, the reappearance of the Emerald Tablet would unite all the remaining pagans against Christianity. But only if we can find the other half.”

“Which is why Orestes wants it?”

“Of course.”

Hannah nodded and looked away.

Alizar looked through her as if he could read her thoughts. “There is something you have not told me.”

Hannah shook her head. “No, I have told you everything there is to tell.”

Alizar put his face in front of hers so she would have to look at him. “If there is one thing I pride myself on it is reading the odd mannerisms of women, and you have not been yourself since you returned from Athens. Hannah, you must know I usually find things out in time, and I have come to prefer knowing my ill-fortune in advance. What is wrong? Does it involve Hypatia? Did the Oracle of Delfi say more?”

She nodded and met his eyes. “Yes.”

“I cannot help you if I do not know the full truth.”

Hannah sighed and then lifted her eyes. “I am with child.”

Alizar shook his head, clearly disappointed. “A man from Athens?”

Hannah cringed. “No, Alizar. It is the child of the Sacred Marriage rite of the Nuapar.”

“Hermes, Zeus and Apollo. Master Junkar’s child?” Alizar groaned and pulled out his pipe. “The library might end their investment in you when Hypatia finds out. They cannot have an unwed mother about. It would only incense the Christians further. And I, well, I am in another predicament entirely having aligned myself with Hypatia and Orestes. The bishop watches what I eat, what letters I send, where I take a shit; it is exhausting.” Alizar sank onto his workbench and spread his hands on the table, revealing the bronze prosthetic thumb he had created for himself, fitted to his hand with a leather glove.

“What should I do?” Hannah was trembling.

“Well, if what you say is true, then you should either give the child up to the Temple of Isis or accept Gideon’s proposal.”

Hannah lifted her eyes, stunned. “What proposal?”

It was Alizar’s turn to look confused. “Why, last night he approached me for your hand in marriage. It is a wonderful proposal, Hannah. Gideon is wealthy and he would treat you well. It is true he has a history of many women, as I am sure you will hear, but I can assure you his proposal is sincere. I believe he has fallen in love with you.”

Hannah stood up and crossed to the window, stunned. “But what about Hypatia and the library? And besides, how could I marry him when marriage is forbidden to slaves?”

“Yes, I know how it is, but these obstacles can be overcome,” said Alizar. “I think it would be better for you.”

Fear flooded Hannah’s eyes. “Than what alternative?”

“Well, do not worry,” said Alizar, changing his mind about finishing his sentence. He did not want to offend her heart. She would see soon enough that love of a Kolossofia master would go unrequited. “I think you would be wise to accept Gideon’s offer. He is a very proud and loyal man. Do you not find him handsome?”

“He is very handsome and even kind,” said Hannah, as she felt the full weight of her circumstances fall upon her. But he was not Julian. He would never be Julian. He heart cried out. But for who? For Julian who was to all who knew him dead? No, there was only one thing she could do. Then thoughts of the Pythia returned to her and she became even more flustered inside, thinking of her quest half-fulfilled. “Alizar, even if I did accept, what of the Emerald Tablet and the Oracle of Amun-Ra?”

Alizar coughed and knocked his pipe on the edge of the table, letting the small cake of ashes fall to the floor. “Leave that to me,” he said.

“I cannot,” said Hannah, crossing the room to stand beside him. “I have given my word. Surely there is a way.”

Alizar nodded thoughtfully, impressed to see such fire in Hannah’s eyes. “In your current state I hardly think it wise to take on such a trek as that. It is more than dangerous, Hannah; it is deadly. But I have all my life longed to go to Siwa, and found that a wife and young children always prevented me. Since I no longer have those responsibilities, here is my proposal: I will go in your place, and you shall stay here until the child comes. That way you are safe and your quest is still fulfilled.”

Hannah shook her head. “I must go,” she said, tears filling her eyes, for she knew that if she had any sense at all she would listen to Alizar.

Alizar sighed, disappointment creasing his brow. He picked up the tablet, rebound the cloth around it, and set it in a chest on the floor under the window. Then he closed it, and the lock snapped shut. “As your master, I forbid it.”

27  

Alizar stood alone on the tip of a broad sand dune, surveying the predawn horizon of the southern desert; his head and shoulders were bound in a white burnoose, only his stark blue eyes, like chips of sky, left showing. The clues of the desert landscape were subtle; he sampled a pinch of sand from beside his feet and let the granules run through his fingertips to discern that the coming day would be warmer than the one that preceded it, if only slightly. A light wind fluttered the cloth of his
tunica
as he trudged down the face of the rippled dune. Behind him the sand lifted like sea spray, then settled.

The ocean and the desert were twins by birth, he felt, the ocean and the desert. The sea whirled like a gypsy beneath the stars while the desert undulated beneath the fingers of the wind. The dunes, like waves, always changed shape with the currents. The ocean was a salty desert of unquenchable thirst; the rolling dry dunes, an endless sea of adamantine waves. Each landscape could be filled with unspeakable beauty one moment, deadly peril the next.

Alizar had no preference. He felt completely alive in the midst of any adventure no matter the landscape, so long as he was confronting death. He had prayed all his life to visit the fabled city of Siwa, and somewhere out beyond the endless sea of sand and parched earth, the oracle of Amun-Ra lay waiting.

What would Naomi say?

Behave your age.

And what would he say?

Never.

And then he would kiss her. How he longed to kiss her.

Alizar looked into the sky for his wife’s face as if he expected to see her there, looking down upon him as the wind picked up again, swirling capriciously and then settling. His feet sunk in the coarse sand to his ankles with every step.

Beyond the dunes, a cave lay situated in an odd lump of hills shaped like the head of a camel. There the others waited for Alizar to return. In the end, he had chosen to bring Jemir, Gideon and Tarek. None wanted to be excluded from the adventure, even if he had not told them about the real reason for going. Tarek heard of the journey and immediately packed his belongings. Jemir scurried through the kitchen determining which pots would be the best to bring. “No cook, no food, no journey,” he had said, adamant. How could Alizar refuse? He accepted, and went into the market to acquire three camels.

When Alizar was just a youth in the Nuapar and heard of the Emerald Tablet for the first time, he knew his destiny was tied to it, and only standing in his stables so many decades later packing for Siwa, did he know why.

“The camels are ready.” Gideon threw the rope to Alizar and crossed the straw to kiss Hannah goodbye. “In three turns of the moon I will return for you,” he said, and she nodded. “Will you be all right?”