Byzantium's Crown (30 page)

Going down to hell to rescue Osiris, Isis had had to strip herself as the price of entry and before Osiris could be restored to life. Could Marric do less?

"Cherish your blessings. Ion shall lift his scepter over Asia in splendor. I decree for the city a happy fate."

As the echoes of Marric's final lines died, he reached up and removed the mask of the god. For a heartbeat, for several heartbeats, there was silence. Then the actor playing the prophetess ran forward waving a serpent-tipped wand.

"Marric!"

From all over the Hippodrome Marric's supporters took up the cry.

"Marric, Marric!"

Below Marric on stage, even the actors were shouting. The audience, sensing the answer to their needs, joined in.

"Mar-ric, Mar-ric!
^"

They made his name into a chant. The paired syllables rang out deafeningly. Marric forced his chin higher, seeking look like the palace sculptures of the gods, his face proud and immobile, his eyes staring past these mortals into infinity.

"Mar-ric, Mar-ric!
^"

Now they were stamping their feet. From the boxes of the aristocrats, from the doors into the arena itself ran soldiers. Just as Marcellinus had planned, here was Marric's guard.

Irene's eyes locked with his. He saw rage there, a burning, almost mindless malevolence that a pyramid of skulls could not satisfy, a thirst for blood that she could not slake even by turning the Golden Horn red.

She stood and screamed something, bird-shrill Red light spurted out from her palms. Marric smelled hemp burning, felt the ropes supporting him high above the ground begin to tremble and slacken. Where were the stagehands? Let them lower him before he fell! As the ropes yielded to the fire, he felt himself swaying. Then they were lowering him. His feet touched ground, and he threw off the robes and harness of his role to stand free before the crowd in the purple silk of a prince of the city.

Irene shrieked words—a spell?—and threw the fragments of the white veil down. Then, in a storm of crimson silk, she rushed from the royal box.

Where had she gone?

Marcellinus ran up to Marric and embraced him, pounding his shoulders in a joyous victory dance completely unlike anything Marric had ever dreamt that the man might do. They were surrounded by all the men who had schemed with them soldiers from the Mangana or the fleet, nobles who had visited him in the safe house, even a few priests.

The chant of Marric's name and thunderous cheering washed over him. Nicephorus, Marric noted absently, was weeping.

Caius Marcellinus released him and gestured the others to fall back. Now those nearest him wore the white of the Candidatoi, the aristocrats among the city's soldiers. Marcellinus saluted, then stood aside as a much older man, his stern face a refined version of Marcellinus' own, came up beside his grandson. This was Valerius Marcellinus, treasurer of the city, confidant to Princes, his father's trusted minister—and now his.

Splendor gleamed, draped over the old patrician's outstretched arms. He shook out the gleaming folds of a paludamentum, the triumphal cloak of the emperors. It shone white and silver and purple in the light of a thousand torches. Gems encrusted it at throat and hem, and formed a blinding surface on the tablion at the cloak's right side. Slowly he approached Marric and wrapped him in the ceremonial cloak of his heritage. It was much heavier than he had expected.

The treasurer backed away from Marric, as if they were both at court. He bowed deeply, then bent his body in the full prostration accorded only to reigning emperors.

And the cheering continued as the Candidatoi and the nobles surrounded their lord and brought him out from the arena of his victory into the square.

Carried from the Hippodrome on the shoulders of men shouting his name, with torches swooping and waving about him, Marric felt not like the emperor they acclaimed but like the god whose part he had taken. Why had he feared to take up this power? He had forgotten. It was exhilarating; he could see how people came to crave it like a rare drug.

Out the gates of the Hippodrome the crowd of worshippers poured, heading for the palace. Only the Varangians might have withstood them, and Irene had ordered them imprisoned. The heavy folds of the cloak Valerius Marcellinus had laid upon Marric's shoulders were all that prevented him from feeling he could fly there like the hawk.

As the procession surged past the Temple of Isis, something small and fast shrieked his name and hurled itself down the steps and into the path of the mob. A woman! As dancing people shoved her, sending her sprawling, she screamed in panic. She would be trampled, Marric thought. This night of his triumph, no one should die except Irene.

He held up a hand, and the procession stopped.

"Lord Marric, please, my lord, please come!"

He signaled for his bearers to set him down· The paving felt oddly insubstantial. Part of him was still floating above the crowd and contemplating his own invulnerability. He walked forward to where the girl cowered in the midst of men with drawn swords, her face hidden in her hands. Then she turned to face him.

"Daphne! Why aren't you with your lady?"

She ran to him and fell at his feet. He lifted her and sensed how her slight body quivered under his hands. What was the child doing out alone? She clung to him, fearing him less than the crowd.

Marric placed her firmly on her feet and gave her a little shake. It would be hard to reassure her in this tumult of men whose eyes, teeth, and weapons glittered in the torch light.

"Why are you here, Daphne?"

"My lady, she sent me—"

"Alone at night through the streets?"

"Yes, yes, she sent me to beg you; come quickly, oh do come!"

"What's wrong, Daphne?" Marric lifted her off her feet.

"She sent me, said she had to send me away before—"

"What is it, Prince. Marcellinus had come up beside Marric. His eyes widened as he recognized the girl.

"Get Nicephorus. Stephana sent her maid after me. Daphne, she sent you away before what happened?"

Except for the tears that poured down her face, Daphne had herself under control. "My lady said . . . she said I should not be sacrificed to her fate."

Stephana's cryptic remarks, her melancholy, even her passionate response to him that very evening: these were the actions of a woman who saw her fate reach out to seize her and dared not—would not—stand aside.

"No!" Marric screamed his denial, and flung Daphne aside, so that the soldier nearest had to catch her. He ran out of the square, down the twisting streets. Sweat poured down his ribs; the heavy imperial cloak hindered his stride. But its weight was not as great a burden as the sudden, appalling fear of years of power, a desolate lifetime of royalty without Stephana close beside him.

Men followed him, but he outran them and came up gasping, one hand against his side, in the doorway of the little house. Just where a torch usually lit the way inside, the body of a man in a rusty tunic, rustier now with blood, sprawled. Even before Marric turned it over, he recognized one of the temple servants.

He pushed the heavy door open. The house felt vacant. Overturned chairs, polycandela lying askew, their lights snuffed, told a grim story. In the garden he found another of his men dying from a throat wound, lying atop a man wearing the crimson livery of Irene's personal guard.

"No." This time he whispered it. He forced himself to go on. The garden was trampled. He saw more dead men, one lying head down in the tiny fountain Stephana had loved. Did she foresee this? He had accounted for all but one of the house staff when the man staggered into his path. Marric caught him as he fell, and knelt beside him.

"Tell me, he cried.

"Queen's men . . . the red empress with them . . . too many,"
the man gasped. Bright blood streamed from his mouth and nose as well as from the sucking chest wound that would kill him in a moment or so. "We . . . we fought, lord"

"None better," Marric assured him. The armsman coughed, a hideous, bubbling sound, and died.

He took the stairs to the upper floor three at a time and shouldered the door open. Stephana had summoned him, and he dreaded what he knew he would find.

A bloody dagger lay on the floor. It was the one he had given her. Had she fought at the end, knowing that her guards were dead? These outer rooms stank of power and evil magic Marric would put an evil name to. Irene! He pushed on to the inner room.

The curtains silvered one night by Isis' touch were charred now. Tremendous energies had deflected them to score the walls and trace black burns across toppled furniture. Shards of fragile glass crunched underfoot; the scents of ointments and perfumes mixed sickeningly with the remnants of Irene's magic.

"Stephana?"

He heard a faint whisper. She lay on their bed, looking almost as she had when he left her there. Now she wore a white shift. It was bloodstained from the dagger buried between her breasts.

She held the knife clasped in both reddening hands, as if she could hold her life within her by force of will.

Marric screamed and dropped to his knees beside her. He gathered her close, as if his touch could ward off her death. While he had been playing the god, exalted as ever any fool could dream of, imagining that everything he had ever wanted lay within his grasp, Irene had moved fast. Stephana must have sensed her death coming for her.

"Daphne found you," Stephana's voice rose weakly. "I am so glad." She sighed. Her eyes lit at the sight of him. One of her hands fell limp against the dragging magnificence of his cloak. He pressed his lips against it and embraced her tightly. She cried out in pain.

"Forgive me!"

"It was my veil," Stephana whispered. "I dropped it . . . the riot that day . . . she traced me."

"You knew this!" he accused. Stephana nodded, then winced as even the slight movement brought pain.

"Knew . . . I told you my fate. I was to help and not fear . . . you, my Marric. You. I did not know it would be so fearful, or so sweet."

It all became clear now. Stephana's pleas for courage, her grief when he tried to plan her future—that damned place in the country!—and the future of the children she knew she would never have: she knew, she knew. Dying at her feet in Alexandria, Marric had claimed her pity, demanded her help, then her love. Now, at the moment of his triumph, he had cost her her life too.

Stephana's hand against his cheek was wet with more than her blood. Then Marric's tears dried.

"Tell me," he begged.

Their minds united for what must surely be the last time and he relived the fateful evening.

Stephana woke from sleep as if mused by a long-awaited summons. She rose, threw on a shift, and summoned Daphne. Taking the child's hands in hers, she looked deep into her eyes and ordered, "Fetch Prince Marric. Do not fear to seek him out wherever he may be. Once you leave this house, no harm will come to you: I swear it! Tell him . . . " Then the love that had weakened her in her quest from freedom from the Wheel surged up for the last time and made her rebel. Yes, she would accept release, but she would see him one last time. She had promised she would wait for him. "Tell him I beg that he come to me with all haste. Now run!"

Daphne fled, and Stephana prepared herself. Marric was a warrior, a fighter born. He would expect her to defend herself. And she would not, she realized, lack for courage at the end. Not this time.

She spared a thought for the body she must cast aside tonight—lithe, well-cared for now, and still tingling from her lover's embrace. It wanted to go on living, to enjoy the promises Marric had made. But Stephana had disciplined herself well. Though she knew it was futile, she picked up the jeweled dagger Marric had insisted she keep by her. Briefly she cradled it against her cheek as if some essence of the giver remained in it.

From the moment she had lost her white veil in the riot, she had known to await this moment. The Goddess was merciful: Stephana would escape rebirth, there would be very little time to fear or to hurt, and she had even known love, coming at the end of a wretched life to be transmuted into triumph. She fell into a trance to prepare herself.

Almost before she heard the death screams outside, she sensed her enemy's presence: female, savagely vengeful, filled with a malice more than human. Irene burst into the suite.

Stephana rose to face her. For a long moment the women examined one another. Irene had power, great power that wreathed about her in a red-tinged aura. Stephana summoned her own defenses in time to deflect bolts of crimson flame that charred the hangings, fused bright mosaics into black glass, and wrecked the peaceful rooms where, briefly, she had known such happiness.

"Why?" she asked the red empress.

"Ask him of my son. For one of mine, one of his," Irene said. Her dark eyes shone like the gems on her garment. Again fire erupted, and Stephana surrounded herself with a nimbus of white light. If Marric came, even now, he might stop Irene and she could live just a little longer. She wanted to. The force of that desire weakened her. Then fear surged up sickeningly, but not for herself. If Marric came now, he would die, crisped by fire he could not protect himself against. Stephana's heart went out to him: proud, so very proud, and unaware of what fate had in store for him.

Irene's next attack caught her by surprise. She screamed and lunged at Stephana with her dagger. More by chance than by skill, Stephana parried it, and her blade slipped off Irene's to score the red queen's arm. The sight of the blood she had drawn appalled Stephana for an instant. Her defenses wavered . . . hideous agony in her breast, and she fell back across her bed . . . heard Irene's laughter trailing away down the hall . . .

"I fought," she whispered.

"My brave one," Marric wiped blood from her lips.

"No pain now." She had accepted her pain long enough to see Marric again. Now she could seek release. As Marric's mind slipped from contact with hers, he realized that though she saw her death as grief for him, she welcomed it as her own triumph.