Fires of Alexandria

by Thomas Carpenter

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The layout for the Temple of Nekhbet was a huge cathedral, surrounded by a labyrinth of lesser rooms and apartments for the priests, acolytes and slaves. The lower level, beneath the main worship chambers, held the sacred mysteries.

  While the temple had fallen on hard times, it was still one of the oldest and grandest in the city. Newer temples were bigger, but they lacked the ornamentation and detail of the Nekhbet.

  But the esthetic value of the building meant less to attracting followers than it had in the past. Heron had been a part of that change. Minor miracles and curiosities had always been a part of the temple retinue, but Heron had brought it to a higher level.

  As Heron stood in the shadows of a nearby temple, scouting a way to enter, she considered the irony that her success as a miracle worker had created the conditions that had brought the Temple of Nekhbet low and she wondered if that factored into their abduction of Sepharia.

  It'd had been half a year, since the disaster in the temple, but wooden scaffolding still clung to the front where the statue had fallen into it. The structural damage had been severe. The repairs appeared to be nearing completion.

  During the setup, she'd been allowed in the side rooms and the upper chambers, but passages to the basement had been watched by temple guards.

  She knew of three entrances. The first went through the main doors that only opened when a fire was lit in the brazier. There was no way she could open that door without alerting every temple on the street, even if she could find the wood.

  The second was the secret door by the alcove. They had used that to enter and exit on a regular basis. But Heron knew they would be expecting her to enter that way.

  Through the courtyard in back was the third entrance. The pulleys to lift the statue had ended at the well. There was no way to sneak up to that door and she assumed it was well guarded.

  Heron wracked her brain trying to remember another way into the temple. She couldn't just stroll in and ask for her niece back. She had to find a way in.

  Heron studied the north wall for windows on the upper floors that she could climb to, but none could be seen and she doubted her ability to scale the wall.

  She thought about everything she knew about the temple layout. She was about to give up when she thought of a fourth way.

  To make the main doors open, the brazier had to be lit, pushing air down a pipe and into a large vessel of water. If the diameter of the pipe wasn't too small, she might be able to fit.

  The scaffolding was conveniently blocking the view of the brazier from the upper windows. Heron made her way through the shadows to the platform next to the stairs that held the brazier.

  The burning bowl was as wide as she was tall. Ashes covered the bottom.

  She put her shoulder into the bowl, pushing as much as her knees could take, but it didn't budge.

  Frustrated, she slumped behind it and examined the skyline. A fiery glow blanketed the northeastern section of the city.

  As she imagined the bucket brigades dousing the spreading fire, the wind shifted bringing a chorus of steel from one street over. The smell of burnt stone assaulted her nose.

  The new direction of the wind would make putting out the fires more difficult, especially while the battle was still raging.

  Heron put aside thoughts of the fire. There was nothing she could do about it and Sepharia needed her.

  She wanted to go to Agog's soldiers and solicit their help. With a squad of his Northmen, they could assault the temple and rescue Sepharia.

  But she knew better than to rush off into a war expecting rationality. Archimedes, the inventor that had most influenced her, had been killed during the Siege of Syracuse by a Roman soldier, despite orders that he should not be harmed.

  So she dismissed the idea of running for help and sighed heavily.

  Heron tapped her fingers on the bronze brazier. Even though she hadn't made this particular miracle, she'd been the one to design it. She'd been hoping the constant fires had weakened the moorings on the brazier making it easy to knock loose.

  She thought a while on the other weak points of the structure. She might be able to wrap a rope around it and use the scaffolding to leverage the bowl from its perch. But she didn't have a rope and she couldn't climb anyway.

  The hole at the bottom of the bowl would be an easy way through except she had devised a clever alternating iron vent that would allow air to pass through without getting clogged with ash.

  A simple grate would have worked, except she'd been concerned slaves would fall through once the metal had been weakened from the constant flame.

  The thought gave her an idea. She crawled around the base until she found the maker's mark. Stamped into the backside of the bowl was Philo's crescent moon paired with a hammer.

  She climbed into the ankle deep ash and felt around with her cane. Then she cleared away a section, making a little depression in the ash. Satisfied, Heron took a deep breath and stomped down hard onto the grate.

  The jarring pain nearly made her black out and she had to grab the edge to remain standing. After another deep breath and a second stomp, the grating snapped open. The ash drained around her ankles, disappearing into the hole at the center.

  Philo had no concern for the lives of slaves, so when he'd copied her design, he'd use a cheap grate instead of her more expensive and complicated venting. For once, Heron was glad she'd lost a job to Philo the Maker.

  Heron sat in the remaining ash with her feet in the hole. She wasn't so sure about the next part. The chamber beneath had to be able to collect pressure to push the water into a bucket. If she couldn't get out of the chamber then she'd likely drown or be stuck for days and possibly die down there.

  She eyed the pile of timbers lying near the scaffolding. After a few minutes of hauling, she dropped two timbers into the hole. Each one made a splash and a thunk.

  Heron lowered herself into the hole. The sides squeezed her shoulders, but she was a slender build. She squirmed her way down the pipe, smearing ash along her body, until her lower half hung free.

  After taking a deep breath, she pushed with her elbows. She hit the timbers with her ankles, cartwheeling her into the wall head first.

  Her mouth opened, sending brackish water down her throat. Heron coughed and sputtered, half-climbing onto the timbers in a desperate attempt to stay above water. It had a thick greasy feel from the constant ash and her eyes burned.

  She tried to use a corner of her tunic to wipe her eyes, but not enough light from the moon slipped down the long tube. She coughed and gagged until she almost threw up.

  Once her stomach settled and she spit enough times to get the large chunks from her mouth, she tried exploring the water chamber.

  It was round and made of bronze. She felt around with her fingertips for an opening, standing on her tip-toes to keep her head above water. She cheered silently when she found the edge of the seal.

  Heron repositioned the first timber to lay against the molded bronze. She climbed on the wood, which was a tricky feat since the ash had slimed the surface.

  Then she pulled the second timber up and jammed it perpendicular against the wood. Carefully lying on her back, she pushed her feet against the upright timber, feeling the door bend beneath her back. The two timbers served as a pair of tongs, prying the door loose.

  With a crack, she broke the seal open. Using the second timber to make a ramp, and after she'd rescued her cane from the murky depths, she climbed up and out of the chamber.

  The platform beneath the opening made for a more graceful exit. The slaves needed it high enough to dump more water in.

  She still couldn't see, but she remembered the layout from her previous time in the temple. Water dripped nearby and the strong smell of dampness made her steps careful. She tried not to imagine rats scurrying in the darkness.

  With ou
tstretched hands, she found the stairway and made her way to the top.

  No one guarded the stairway, so Heron gained the main level without alarm. She reviewed herself in the dim candlelight flickering at the top of the stair. The previously white tunic was now dingy gray with streaks of black.

  She squeezed her tunic until it was merely damp. She didn't want to leave a trail of drips as she searched.

  The hallway split from her location as she tried to ignore the heady scent of burnt cinnamon. The temple must burn buckets of the incense daily.

  The left passage led to the labyrinth of rooms housing the faithful. Far on the other side was a stairwell to the lower areas. Intuition told Heron that Sepharia would be kept below.

  But she didn't want to creep through the rooms. There was no way she would make it through without being found. So she went right, in the direction of the main cathedral.

  She knew a hidden passage lay in the center of the floor, so the priests could appear suddenly during a distraction and amaze the flock. They'd used the passage during her miracle, though the idiot priest had gotten overzealous and nearly brought down the building.

  Heron was surprised to find the statue of Nekhbet standing in the center of the huge room amid a lattice of scaffolding. The vulture-headed god had been damaged from when it had heaved into the wall and it appeared progress on the repairs had recently stopped at the beak.

  The structure looked surprisingly flimsy. She wondered how none of the stone workers had been injured.

  She was about to move in when a flicker of light alerted her to the approaching priests. Heron ducked into an alcove, clutching her cane defensively.

  Either her stained tunic blended into the stone easily or the two young priests were too busy discussing the best ways to request a tithe to notice her. They passed a couple of steps from her hiding location.

  Heron relaxed after they were gone and limped as quickly as she could to the hidden stairwell. Kneeling around on the floor behind the statue, she found the latch which opened the trapdoor. Heron dropped into the hole, grimacing from the short drop onto a stone platform.

  The temple used an inelegant way of getting their priest into the cathedral quickly. Three acolytes would crouch where she was standing, holding up a wooden pillar while the priest balanced on top.

  At the appointed moment, the priest would slide open the passage and they would thrust him upward. The pillar matched the flooring, completing the illusion that the priest had appeared from nothing.

  Heron regretted her time working with the temple charlatans. She silently promised to atone her abetment of the temples by creating a city that didn't need them.

  The lower chambers were a mystery to Heron. She'd never been beyond the top of the stairs.

  She crept through the stone hewn passages, restraining the urge to use her cane, fearful of making a sound. Torch light was sparse, so she spent half the time creeping through the darkness.

  The rooms were mostly storage for the sacraments and costumes of the priesthood. Heron thought about putting on a vulture-headed mask, but decided that would only make her more obvious and make it harder to escape, should she be spotted.

  The hallways were painted with scenes of the temple's history, but the light was so dim, Heron couldn't make out the details.

  Once she came upon a lighted passageway, past a room filled with dried incense including the offending burnt cinnamon and with paintings that immediately made her heart clench.

  She'd found a duplicate scene on the walls at the Oracle of Ammon in which the line of robed men danced around an altar beneath a darkened moon. This painting had more detail and she was able to see a bloody sacrifice on the altar.

  The sacrifice was a woman, carrying a scroll in one hand and a leafy branch in the other. The men around the altar wielded curved knives.

  Seeing the duplicate painting connected many previously remote facts in a web that stretched wider than she first thought. Even the book dealer's death meant more now in retrospect than it had then.

  The flicker of an approaching torch distracted her from further examination of the painting. Heron fled as fast as she could, each step a tiny grimace of pain.

  She never saw the torch-bearer, but couldn't find her way back to the painting. A scene to the right, hidden by shadow had promised more insight into the temple.

  But investigating the fires wasn't why she'd come to the temple. She'd come to find Sepharia, and in her surprise upon turning a corner, she found her.

  Stretched across an altar, much like the one in the painting, lay Sepharia. Her chest appeared to be moving up and down, so Heron assumed she was alive.

  Heron barely noticed the rest of the room, despite alternating between horrible strangeness and unusual familiarity, as she hurried to Sepharia's side. Her niece was strapped to the altar with stained ropes.

  Heron had one strap partially loosened when she heard footsteps from the hallway. She had barely scrambled behind the altar before torch light flooded the room.

  When she heard the man's voice, one she knew very well, her surprise was immediate, but then as the other facts of the investigation slipped into place, it all made logical sense.