The Shadow of Ararat (75 page)

The stone walkway along the river rippled with the shock of the stones under the main gate rupturing in a blossom of white-hot flame. Zoë was hurled aside into Dwyrin, and the two of them fell into the river in a tangle of limbs. Eric, who had happened to be looking toward the gate when Dwyrin's foundation stone erupted, was blinded by the flare of light and then spun around and thrown, afire, into the river. He wailed once as the dark waters closed over his head with a slap and then he was gone. Odenathus, who had been crouched at the very end of the walkway, felt a hot wind rush over him, and he clung tenaciously to the stones at his back.

The valves of the gate rose up in the air on a blast of white fire, torn from their hinges like impossibly large leaves. They tumbled over and over and then arrowed down into the river like giant axes, punching through the sides of two of the barges, spilling stunned Romans in heavy armor into the dark, crowded waters. The two towers on either side of the gate shook with the force of the blast but stood firm, though the men inside them were deafened by the shock of the sound. The inner courtyard behind the gate was filled with the shattered bodies of men wrapped in flame. The archers who had run forward to cover the advance of the tortoise were incinerated where they stood or smashed to the ground or thrown off the bridge into the river. The tortoise was blown back twenty feet, crushing the men inside to a pulp and then sliding another ten feet on the bloody grease that they made.

The men behind the tortoise were bowled over; many where killed or maimed. The gruff centurion, half blinded by a wood splinter that had spun out of the tortoise and slashed the side of his face open, staggered up out of the mass of tumbled men.

"Advance!" he bellowed and loped forward over the corpses of his friends. The cohorts of the Third Augusta picked themselves up behind him and rushed forward as well, though their hobnailed sandals slipped and skidded on the blood and bodies of the dead men. "Roma Victrix!" they shouted as they ran, a great basso roar.

Dwyrin struggled in the icy water. Darkness surged around him, the current dragging at his body with chill fingers. He clung to Zoë fiercely with his left arm wrapped around her midriff, while he kicked strongly and clawed at the water with his right arm. The river spun them around, and suddenly the darkness broke as Dwyrin's head shot above the water. A red glare lit up the surface of the water, and Dwyrin could see the flanks of boats all around him. The bow of one rushed toward him from the left. The Hibernian kicked sideways, rolling onto his back and pulling Zoë onto his chest.

His legs, filled out with muscle over the past weeks, kicked hard, pushing him through the water. The boat surged past, huge and black, with the pale faces of men staring over the side. Dwyrin gasped for air, nearly swamped by the wake. It passed and he continued to kick. He found the bank with his head, ramming into a stone in the shallows downstream from the walls of the city. He cried out in pain but did not let go of Zoë, who was a dead weight in his arms. Dwyrin staggered up, dragging her out of the river through a torn up cluster of reeds. Around him the night was alive with the shouts of men, the red glow of the burning citadel, and running figures. More boats were piling up against the shore, and legionnaires were climbing out into the muddy shallows. He lay Zoë down once he found ground firm enough to hold her. She was not breathing. Dwyrin felt a chill.

He rolled her on her side, wrapped his arms around her abdomen, and squeezed hard. Her body twitched and water dribbled out of her mouth. He squeezed again and there was a burp of muddy water. Dwyrin, his motions quick, rolled her back over and tipped her head back. Fighting back tears, he leaned over her and breathed into her mouth. Soldiers ran past in the murk and centurions bellowed, trying to organize their men. Zoë coughed, spewing water and bile into Dwyrin's face. He wiped it out of his eyes and leaned back. The dark-haired girl coughed again and he rolled her over. She spit up more liquid but now she was breathing.

Dwyrin held her close, trying to warm her cold body with his. There was a rumbling sound from the city, and new flames shot up. In the ruddy light, Dwyrin could see lines of men trotting off through the brush toward the walls. Zoë trembled in his arms. Fire gleamed off of the water like a stain of living blood.

Along rod of white-hot iron, gripped between pincers held in hands gloved with a triple layer of leather, plunged into slick dark water with a tremendous hiss. The forge man stepped back, raising the iron rod from the quenching bath. It hissed and steamed, water sluicing from it. The forge man turned and laid the rod on a massive block of steel where another man joined him, seizing it between his own pair of pincers. A hammer, massive and solid, rang down on the glowing bar. Sparks flew, joining thousands of others clouding the superheated air of the forge.

Maxian stalked through the darkness, his hollow cheeks puddles of shadow. Abdmachus drifted behind him, his clothing stripped down to a pair of trousers and sandals. Sweat slicked his skin, muddying the tracery of inked symbols that covered the little sorcerer's body. The roaring fire of the forges and crucibles gleamed off Maxian's face, highlighting his nose and cheekbones. The noise was so great from the hammers and spitting cauldrons that a man could barely hear himself think. Around the Prince, dozens of men in heavy leather aprons labored, their muscled bodies slick with sweat. The air was thick, charged with fumes and vapors. Maxian climbed a stairway of stone to a platform that rose from one side of the great chamber.

Below him he could see the whole floor of the ironworks. A great apparatus was rising amid the open space between the rows of forges and pits of molten iron. Sparks showered from hammers bent to the task of welding iron to iron. Men carefully raised the bones of a great skeleton high, helped by a dizzying array of winches and pulleys that were suspended from a ceiling lost in smoke and fumes. The outline of vast jagged wings arched over the chamber, high above even Maxian as he stood on the platform, feeling the roar of noise beat on him like the ocean tide. His eyes gleamed in the ruddy light.

Ah, Aurelian, he mused, you would love these works more than any man...

"You have done well, my friend," Maxian said, turning a little toward the Persian.

Abdmachus bowed and then met the Roman's eyes. The little sorcerer's face split with a grin. This construction was his greatest work. Maxian smiled back, pleased that his friend had found a true purpose at last. Without him and his skills, this effort would be impossible.

The men on the floor did not look up, though they felt the gaze of their master upon them. The Prince looked up into the face of the creature, cruel and fanged, enormous, a tilted head with a long snout and deep-set eyes.

Soon,
the Prince thought,
you will live.

The great head, wider than a man was tall, gazed back at him, soulless, eyeless, only pits of darkness lit with flames. Maxian turned and stepped through a heavy circular door raised up on hinges of dark corroded iron. Beyond the portal the noise ceased, becoming only a dull background rumble of hammers, and gears and spitting metal fire. Abdmachus wiped his brow and then stepped lightly down the stairs. Work was beginning on one of the wing joints, and it needed his delicate hand at the casting.

Krista was waiting in the room of documents, her long hair tied back behind her head, though it flared out first and then spilled over her shoulders. She wore a smock stained with dark pinpoints and a blousy shirt with heavy sleeves that were tied back from her wrists. There was a smudge of sooty ink on the side of her nose. Maxian's ears were still ringing from the cacophony of the forge. Her lips moved, but he could not hear anything for a moment.

He held up a hand and his eyelids fluttered closed as he concentrated. He was becoming almost gaunt, though the work had begun to raise ridges of muscle on his arms, shoulders, and torso. He opened his eyes when he could hear again.

"There is someone waiting to see you," Krista said, her voice even and polite.

Maxian caught the hint of ice under the genteel tone. An eyebrow arched.

"One of the handmaidens of the dark woman. She is in the anteroom."

The Prince nodded and went to the other door, weaving around tables thickly strewn with parchments and papyrus scrolls. Every space on the walls and floor was covered with drawings, books, and tiny models crafted from wood and clay. At the center of one wall, a great drawing, painstakingly etched by Krista on a sheet of copper with a steel needle and then rubbed down with charcoal, showed the apparatus in all its feral glory. Maxian smiled when he looked upon it.

What might men achieve,
he thought with a sense of deep satisfaction,
they could but raise their heads up and dream?

He paused at the door to the outer rooms and looked back at her. She still stood by her drawing table, leaning on it with one long-fingered hand. She was looking away, staring at the papers and long scrolls. To his eye, attuned to her nature and moods, he could see deep anger in the line of her head and shoulders.

"Do you still have your spring-gun?" he asked quietly. Her head turned slowly, her eyes heavily lidded and opaque.

"Yes," she said.

"Let me see it." He held out a hand turned dark by coal dust. She paused for a moment, then it appeared like magic in her right hand. Maxian raised an eyebrow again and took the heavy metal tube. He had never seen it up close before, and he turned it over in his hands. It was eight inches long, with a copper central tube and wire grips welded to the outside. There was a slide on one side that had a thumb-sized ring on it. The ring, currently, was at the top of the tube. Inside the tube was a ring of folded steel that ran in two grooves. He could barely make out the shape of a spring inside the central tube. The grips were well worn with use.

"Can I see one of your darts?"

A dart—six inches of burnished steel with a point shaped like a cone at one end and three small fins at the other—appeared in her hand as well. It was heavy, lying in his hand like a lead weight. He handed the spring tube back, but kept the dart for a moment, cupping his hands around it. There was a flicker of light between his fingers and he muttered something to the missile.

Krista took the dart back without expression or comment. She slotted it into the tube and slid the ring back with a practiced motion. The dart sank into the tube, and there was a clicking sound as the ring locked into a snap at the base. The whole assembly disappeared into her sleeve again. Maxian watched carefully but could not make out how she had secreted it.

"I'd like you to come with me to meet this person."

"Why?" Some interest leaked through in the cast of her eyes.

"I trust you at my back," the Prince said, ruefully, "particularly with one of these women in front of me." Krista shrugged and untied her sleeves, letting them fall to her wrists. When he turned away she smiled, a secret thing that suffused her face for a moment and then was gone.

Maxian entered the room, bending his head a little to pass under the lintel. He had put on a new shirt, this one a deep-green cotton, and had made some attempt to get his hair, grown ever longer now, back under control. There was more color in his face too.

The woman rose, her dark robes falling around her like the wings of night. It was the blond one who had looked back over her shoulder. Her hair was loose and very long, a shimmering cascade down her back. The cloak covered her shoulders, but her breasts, creamy white, threatened to spill out of the tight leather bodice that contained them in crisscrossed leather ties. She bowed deeply as he entered, allowing her dress to slither away from a long smooth thigh and firm calf. Her sandal straps oozed up and around her leg almost to her knee, snug to the flesh. Her eyes were a tremendously deep blue, a clear winter sky over bare trees and fallen snow.

"I am Alais," she said in a husky voice. Maxian's nostrils twitched; there was a musky smell in the air around her like a waiting noose, filled with the rich smell of spring and freshly turned earth. Her lips trembled, a dusky red like dying roses, showing tiny white teeth. The Prince could feel his body quiver in reaction to her. Behind him there was a very quiet laugh from Krista, who had drifted silently into the room. The sound was an anchor for him, keeping his thought from drifting to Alais' smooth thighs and breasts.

"Welcome, Alais." His voice was even and quiet, though it was a struggle to keep from stepping even closer to her. "What brings you to our house this night? A message from your mistress, perhaps?"

The blue eyes flickered and the pouting lips firmed at the mention of the lady in black. "I come on my own accord, my lord. Though we all hold the Matron in all honor, she is not our master. I heard your generous offer when she spoke to you. Would you offer another the same trust?"

Maxian cocked his head to one side and regarded the woman. He was centered again. The balance in the room changed, and he felt it. For all her glamour, the woman was an echo in an empty room. "You desire respite from pain?"

She bowed her head, the long tresses falling around her face. "Yes, lord. I and others will serve you and earn your trust if you will give us the elixir." Her voice trembled, a ragged edge creeping into it.

"You understand that until you have won my trust, I will not reveal to you the mechanism of its manufacture?"

"Yes, lord. I... we... understand."

"You will swear an oath to me, to follow my will and accept my protection? To do my bidding and to execute my desires in exchange for surcease from pain?"

"Yes." She knelt on the floor at his feet and the air in the room subtly changed. Krista felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise up. The lamps flickered and dimmed, casting an odd gold light into the room. Her skirts and cloak puddled around her like a lake of ink, broken only by the long white trails of her hair. "I will be oathbound to you." A hand crept out, trembling, to touch the toe of Maxian's shoe.