The Gate of Fire (76 page)

The words seemed an anchor, a lifeline across these black days to the man who had stood in front of the boatshed in Ostia. Maxian smoothed back his hair nervously. The words had been cut into a great slab of fine Cosian marble in the foyer of the temple. It was the first task of each initiate to commit them to memory. He knew what he should do, but it would be dangerous, and it might even cost him his life.
But what then of my oath to myself and to the brothers of my craft? What of Krista? What of my brothers?

He pushed away from the stone and the friendly calming vibration that suffused it. If he was the man he thought himself to be, he would betake himself back to Rome and surrender himself to the mercy of his Imperial brother. Maxian grinned to himself. The Engine, at least, would be a worthy gift to Galen!

"Maxian! Lord Maxian!"

The Prince looked up, shading his eyes with a hand. There was a scrabbling sound, and rocks tumbled down from above. He craned his neck and stepped out into the center of the grotto. One of the Walach boys—Anatol?—was perched on the top of a pinnacle.

"Down here!" Maxian waved his arms, drawing the boy's attention. "What is it?"

"They've found it, my lord! Lord Gaius says that he's found it!" Anatol's voice echoed from the mossy stones and was quickly swallowed up by the wilderness of thorn bush and ivy.

"Found what?" Maxian tried not to let his impatience show.

"The text you sought, my lord. The original notes for the Oath!"

Maxian raised both eyebrows in surprise and then he jogged across the grotto to the hidden trail.

"You've read this, of course." The Prince held up a thin sheet of papyrus, old and yellowed, with crumbling edges, to the light from one of the library windows. Unlike most of the windows in the villa, these were covered with small squares of clear glass set into a metal frame. They allowed light even when the day was cold or blustery, unlike most of the others, which were covered with wooden shutters or lattices. Maxian frowned; the writing on the paper was in a weak, spidery hand, and the ink, over the centuries, had faded. "Did you make a translation?"

Gaius Julius nodded and pushed a sheet of fresh parchment, almost white, across the surface of the plank table they had dragged in from the stables. Alexandros was sitting next to him, perched on the back of a chair, looking for all the world like a blond crow. Maxian picked up the sheet and settled in the chair, comparing the original—which was in Greek—and Gaius' translation, which was in his simple, straightforward Latin. Maxian had once chaffed the old Roman about his writing style in comparison to the noble orators, to which Gaius had replied, in an arch tone, that "Cicero can stuff himself."

Maxian's face turned grave as he read the text of the paper. In the original there had been emendations and notes inked in along the margins. Gaius had listed these as well on a second sheet, with circled numbers indicating where each one had appeared in the original. The Prince put the translation aside once he had read it through and laid the old scroll carefully down on the table. He pinched his nose and closed his eyes for a moment, then drew a box around the papyrus with his fingertip.

Gaius Julius and Alexandros shared a glance, shrugged, then turned to watch the Prince.

Maxian rested his hands on the tabletop, palms down, on either side of the invisible box. His attention turned inward—this much was clear—and a low, faint hum rose up. Motes of dust sparkled in the air, glittering in the falling rays of the sun. On the tabletop, the scroll shifted by itself, making a faint rattle. The Prince's head slumped low on his chest. Dust spun through the air, blown on an invisible wind. Gaius Julius inched back, feeling a draft on his neck. The motes whirled through the sunstreaked air, collecting within the box. The scroll lifted into the air, no more than the width of a man's small fingertip. Dust rushed to it, filling the cracked and broken edges, restoring—suddenly—the yellowed surface to a delicate cream. The ink congealed on the page, becoming dark and clear.

Alexandros whistled in surprise. The dust continued to fill in the page, but it began to form in the air beside the sheet with dizzying speed. A second page of papyrus spun out of gossamer crept through the air. It built mote by mote, atom of dust by atom. Diagrams and signs in unknown tongues filled the sheet, the ink seemingly welling up out of the papyrus. The edge of this new sheet composed itself with a crisp snap. Then another began to build, above the first.

"Hades... it's a whole bloody book!" Gaius Julius fell silent, watching the drawn, pale face of the Prince. Pages continued to build out of the thin air, filled with the spidery crabbed writing and a wild confusion of diagrams, gruesome pictures, and astronomical patterns. The hum rose in pitch until it shook the table legs, making them dance, and set Gaius' teeth on edge. Sunlight fled, and evening came.

At last, when nearly a hundred sheets had appeared, the Prince looked up, his face haggard. "It is done." He raised his hands from the tabletop, and the hundred sheets, stacked in the air, collapsed with a soft flutter to the planks. The room was unnaturally clean, every surface shining and dust free. Maxian opened his eyes and looked around, lost for a moment.

Alexandros circled the table and, very gently, touched the edge of the manuscript. The papyrus rustled. "It's real..." The Macedonian smiled in delight and withdrew his finger.

"Yes," the Prince said in a weary voice. "Whole and complete in sentence, word, and verse, as it was on the first day it was written down at the command of Emperor Augustus."

Gaius Julius made a clicking sound with his teeth. He pointed with his chin at the book.

"This is what you call similarity? Like these lattices within the Oath?"

Maxian nodded and leafed through the sheets of paper. He found the original page, now gleaming white, and turned over the book to expose it. The emendations stood out in slightly different colored ink. "This book was done as a whole, by one person working at a furious pace, at one time. That man—his name was Khamûn, a Greek-speaking Egyptian—was under deadly pressure. He held the whole of this document in his mind as he wrote each page. He was a wizard, even as Abdmachus was, and the strength of his vision impressed itself upon the whole. It was a simple thing to call it forth from the one surviving page."

At the mention of the Egyptian's name, Gaius Julius had made a face and was now lost in thought. Maxian tapped on the tabletop, drawing his attention. "Is this man known to you? He lived in your time."

"Yes..." Gaius Julius seemed hesitant, but then he forged ahead. "During my time in Egypt, there was trouble among the Royal House of Ptolemy. On one side stood the boy-prince, and on the other, his sister. Each desired nothing so much as the other's death—I remember that the boy had taken a sorcerer into his employ. He made some trouble for the Queen, but my soldiers sorted it out."

Gaius clicked his nails against his teeth, lost in an ancient vision. "He was a funny old bird. I may... I may have sent him home, for my Triumph..."

Maxian raised an eyebrow at that and scowled. Alexandros laughed, draping himself over a chair.

"That was wise," snapped the Prince. "Sending a man of unknown powers home to dawdle among the idlers of the city. Your esteemed nephew, I warrant, did not miss the opportunity to take him into his household. I wondered how this whole business came about. Now it is rather unpleasantly clear."

"You know, then? This treatise tells you?" Alexandros swung up out of his chair, eager for the hunt. "How it came about, I mean, the Oath. How to break it?"

Maxian turned to look at the Macedonian and nodded, his face still and quiet.

"I know."

"Then?" Alexandros was ready to spring up from his chair, spear and sword in hand, and test his strength against anything—visible or invisible. Energy seemed to flow from him, now that he was roused by the thought of an end to their struggle. "What need we do?"

"Nothing," Maxian said coldly and he stood, gathering up the book. "We will do nothing."

"What!" Even Gaius Julius was on his feet, fists on the table. Alexandros was fairly dancing from foot to foot. "After all this, you say we will do nothing?"

"I do," the Prince said, eyeing the two men. He sighed and turned back to them. "Gaius Julius, your intuition was right. Augustus put Khamûn to the task of safeguarding his reign by devising an Oath that would bind the common soldier directly to the Emperor. Upon reflection, he demanded an extension of that guard to include his office and his heirs as well. The defection of the eastern Legions to Antony during their little war must have galled him! Khamûn will have been put to death immediately afterward, I suppose. He was a superlative architect, a true master of the art."

"And so?" Gaius Julius moved around the table to stand by Alexandros. The hairs on the backs of his arms were standing up. The Prince seemed strange, and Gaius felt danger in the air around him. "What does all that mean to us?"

"It means, Gaius, that while the Emperor lives, the State endures. If I am to throw down the lattices of forms that are the core of this thing, I shall have to murder my brother and take his mantle as my own."

The words hung in the air of the library. Maxian turned again to leave, but Alexandros suddenly stepped forward and grasped the Prince by his arm. "Then do it! Man, you are to be a king! Flinching from blood will not make it easier. Trust me, I know full well the cost of Empire—have I not born it myself, on the bodies of my brothers and my father? If your brother must die to succor your people, is his single death not worth the freedom of millions?"

Maxian wrenched his arm from the Macedonians, an angry look settling over his face. "No," snapped the Prince, his voice hot. "It is
not
worth it. I am putting this thing aside. This I resolved today, on the mountaintop, and this"—he raised the book up—"only makes my will the surer. I have killed, murdered, maimed in the pursuit of this, and it is
not worth it!
"

Gaius felt the full chill of nearing death wash over him. It was worse than the hot shock of the blood-fire in battle, or the whisper of a Gaulish axe flying past his head. He remembered dank, close woods and the howling of his enemies. He gripped a nearby chair and coughed. Alexandros turned, and Gaius caught his eye with a sharp glare.

"Lord Prince, if this is your will, so be it. But what of us? You gave us life again and purpose. Will you put us aside now, like discarded toys after the gifting feast?"

Maxian sighed, weary, and raised a hand in dismissal. "Go. I will not withdraw the power that gives you motion. Find your own way in the world." Then he was gone, his charcoal cloak blending with the dark corridor and the rap of his boots echoing on the square tiles. When it faded, Gaius Julius turned to Alexandros.

"Well, I believe that we have reached a time of parting from these dear friends." The old Roman smiled, and his teeth were very bright in the dim light. Alexandros shook his shaggy curls away from his eyes, then smoothed it back with a trim muscular hand. Gaius touched the disk the Macedonian wore around his neck on a copper chain.

"We shall have to test these," he said, laughter bubbling in his voice. "Should they work—"

"We shall find a new world before us," finished Alexandros, and he, too, was smiling.

"And where will you go, my lad?" Gaius was already considering what to take from the villa. Gold first, of course, as much as he could find. Then fine horses and some of the local wine.

"To Rome, old man, where else?" Alexandros seemed to have settled the nervous energy that had filled him before. Now his mind was waking, rising up from the lulling doze it had assumed for the time when the Prince was his master.

"To Rome, then." The two men clasped forearms and bowed, one to the other. "To Rome."

Terns wheeled and swooped over the water, lazing through the afternoon sky. The air shimmered with thermals rising from the marble docks of the harbor. Nicholas tramped down the gangway of the Tyrean coaster, his kit bag slung over one shoulder and his shirt half-undone. The sky and sun seemed unnaturally bright and the glare of gleaming sandstone quays and dockside buildings hurt his eyes. The harbor of the city was justly renowned throughout the
Mare Internum
for its smart appointments and the engineering marvel that it represented—having been built on an otherwise barren and useless shore.

For some reason the port was nearly empty of ships, so the coaster had found a tie-up close to the tall white shape of the Pharos at the southern end of the docks. Vladimir groaned behind him; the Walach hated bright sun even worse than Nicholas did. Only Dwyrin seemed happy. Despite moping over some sprig of a girl for the last week, this landfall had made him positively cheery.

"Ah... warm at last!" Dwyrin stretched his arms and grinned, viewing the sand dunes and dusty brown hills that rose up behind the port with delight. Nicholas shook his head in dismay—he had thought that Greece was hot, but this? It was still the edge of spring but the air shimmered with heat like the haze over a hot griddle pan. What would it be like in full summer?

"Is it usually like this?" There was an aggrieved tone in Vladimir's voice. He was squinting ferociously.

Dwyrin nodded, breathing deep of the arid desert air. "It is. This is a fine day, in fact. Look at that sky! I'd almost forgotten how blue it can be... Don't worry, Vlad, you'll love it here!"

"Of course," snarled the Walach, "just as soon as my eyeballs dry up and I go blind."

Dwyrin clapped Vladimir on the shoulder in a companionable way. "Don't fret so," he said. "Just drink lots of water."

"Water?" Nicholas turned from his survey of the tan-and-white warehouses, offices, and boatsheds. "Is it fit to drink? Wouldn't we be safer with wine?"

The Hibernian shrugged and hitched his carry bag upon his shoulder. Nicholas saw that the boy had produced an evil-looking straw hat from somewhere and had crammed it down over his long red braids. He made a note to get one too. The sun was already burning on the back of his neck.