Fires of Alexandria

by Thomas Carpenter

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  "Come out, Heron. Your entrance to the temple was not unnoticed. Our priests see beyond this mortal realm and cannot be fooled by mere trickery."

  Heron froze, hoping for a second his call was a bluff, but in the instant after, she knew it wasn't by the surety of his voice.

  She turned, using the time to examine the room closer. It was larger than she first thought. A dyed screen hid familiar shapes. The altar was made into the shape of a ziggurat.

  The walls had been painted into a dramatic vista. They were surrounded by mountains under a night sky.

  Five crimson pillars ringed the altar. Fantastic creatures were carved into the stone. Heron could see the shape of a shedu—a winged bull man. Examination of the others was lost as she turned to face her antagonists.

  "Greetings, Philo," she said. "I should have known you were going to be lurking in the bowels of this temple."

  "Greetings, Heron. You look to be the one rooting around in bowels."

  Philo stood beside the High Priest Ghet. Her rival wore an azure toga with black silk edges. He looked ready to welcome guests into a party.

  Ghet drummed his obscenely long fingernails against his robe, studying her with near erotic focus.

  "I told you, he would come if we took his daughter," said Ghet.

  Heron glanced at Sepharia, unconscious on the altar. If she couldn't wake her, there would be no way to carry her out, even if she could overcome the two men.

  "I didn't realize the temples trafficked in simple kidnapping," she said. "I thought you were into more widespread destruction like the burning of the Great Library."

  Ghet laughed playfully. "Have we finally made your list of suspects?"

  "More than suspect, Ghet. The temple's fingerprints have been all over the fires and my investigation. You might have been better off had you not tried to interfere," she explained.

  Ghet sneered. "Even by your words, I can tell you have not fully comprehended the depth of your problems."

  "Then elaborate," she said.

  The two men blocked the only entrance from the chamber. The high priest had a curved dagger in his belt. Philo appeared unarmed.

  "You are our guest. You first," he indicated her with outstretched fingernails.

  Philo watched with casual amusement.

  She needed more time, so she took his indulgence. "Fine." Then she stopped, glancing upward. "First, your priests did not see beyond the mortal realm in my coming here. When I dropped into the water chamber, I displaced enough water to open the doors."

  She regretted not seeing that problem before, but she'd nearly drowned herself and all-encompassing thought had gone out the window. There was nothing to do about it now.

  Philo chuckled and clapped his hands once, as if she were a child telling a first joke. "You see, Ghet. I told you he was of quick wit. It'll be a shame really."

  His sideways glance was hate filled. She paced in front of the altar, using her cane to steady.

  "The fires were started by one of your acolytes, posing as a scribbler or other such minor functionary in the Library. It might have been more than one, but the word was given to start the fires during the heat of battle. It was only luck that Caesar started his own fire, masking the one set by your people," she said.

  "You say that as if I were alive then," said Ghet, tapping his fingernails against his chest. "Unless you think me a powerful necromancer extending my life through a pact with the dead."

  "You or your temples. It's all the same. Whether it happened one hundred years ago or that you plot it again matters not," she said.

  "Ah yes," he said wistfully. "It would be great fun to wipe out another swath of the Library. Shame the fire protections are more stringent now, or that we didn't know of this battle before it started. We can't let the people see us tip our hand."

  Heron breathed a silent sigh of relief. She'd been concerned about another fire in the Library during the battle, but his confession quelled her concerns.

  "So you admit it," she said.

  Sepharia seemed to be thrashing lightly as if waking from a bad dream. Philo stood where he began with his hands clasped behind him. Ghet had moved closer, hand on hilt.

  "What does it matter if I admit it," he said. "You won't survive the night and even if you did, you have no proof of your accusation. No Magistrate would ever consider it." He paused. "But I am curious how you knew it was our acolytes in the Library."

  Heron nodded. "When I was performing your miracle in the temple, I recalled seeing an acolyte with ink stained fingers like the scribblers. It was an odd sight."

  Ghet played with the dagger in his belt, narrowing his eyes. "Yes, I suppose it is."

  "And in the Library, I have passed scribblers that reeked of burnt cinnamon," she explained.

  Ghet laughed. "That particular incense is rather strong."

  "The rest is so obvious and heavy handed it's laughable," she said, hoping for a reaction. When none came, she continued, "The prophecy from the Oracle at Ammon was clearly a plant as were the hag's words that sent me in that direction. Did you think me that blind?"

  She spun around, pointing the cane at them. "How long have you been guiding the wheels of history using your Oracles? Are they all yours?"

  Ghet tried to act nonchalant about her accusations but she could see in his tensed shoulders that she hit squarely on the mark. Philo wasn't a much better actor and practically choked on her last comment.

  "You had your thugs attack me in the streets, your assassins kill the book dealer trying to throw me onto the scent of the Carthaginian cult," she said. "Everything you did practically led me to you."

  "But yet you know nothing about us," said Ghet in a practiced flippance that Heron saw right through.

  "I know everything about you," she said, keeping the point of the cane firmly trained on Ghet. "You are not the Temple of Nekhbet. You are the Cult of Ur from ancient Sumer."

  Before, Ghet seemed to accept her accusations cheerfully, as if he expected them and he was a cat, merely playing with her, the mouse.

  At the word Ur he stiffened and his fingers, that had been teasing the hilt of his dagger, grabbed it angrily. Philo looked equally shocked though less dangerous.

  Ghet glared at her with murderous intent. "How long have you known?"

  Heron let her cane drop to the floor. "Truthfully, only this evening. It wasn't until I saw the mountain altar painting on your catacomb walls, the same scene I witnessed in the Oracle, that my mind first whirled around the idea. Add this altar, clearly shaped into the Ziggurat of Ur and I could see nothing else."

  Philo nodded appreciatively, as if he were a fellow scholar listening to an enlightening lecture. Ghet's eyes bounced around the room, clearly wondering what other secrets Heron could uncover.

  "You see, under my long tenure as chief miracle maker of the temples of Alexandria, I have, unfortunately, become an expert on the religions of our time," she explained.

  Sepharia made a soft moan. Heron turned, faking a moment of deep thought, when actually she scoured the room for a more formidable weapon than her wooden cane. With nothing in sight, she decided to make a play for the object behind the screen, though making use of it would require clever maneuvering.

  "Interestingly enough," she continued. "The book dealer tried to clue me into your attack by pulling out a book from his shelves while he died called Sumerian Myths. I've read the book before, recalling mention of an ancient cult from Ur that sought to gain power through hidden means."

  Ghet cleared his throat. "Our intentions are not to gain power, but to protect the sight of Man from the illusions of knowledge."

  Heron leaned on her cane. "Yet you use knowledge in the form of illusions to hold onto your power? Your words are a dry scroll to the flame of my logic."

  Ghet puffed himself up. "If you stare directly into the sun, your eyes will
become burned out. Only by seeing the reflected light by the moon can we safely view the knowledge given by the gods."

  "So knowledge is only safe through the filter of the temples?" she said, practically spitting the words out and then turned to Philo. "How can you be a part of that Philo? While you're a snake and a cheat and lack an original bone in your body, you are still an inventor and a scholar."

  Philo appeared not affected by her insults. "But I bow to the wisdom of the temples. They are right in their prudence. Look at the numerous accidents you've had pushing the boundaries of this knowledge. My path is the safer path."

  "Lies," she said. "You might as well tie the yoke around your head and bend thy arse to them."

  Philo's lip curled in anger. She didn't want either of them thinking logically if she were to escape. But she hoped she hadn't pushed them too far.

  Heron wandered over to the screen, checking back with her antagonists to make sure they hadn't moved closer. Philo had a sanctimonious smile on his face.

  "I see you've found your work," said Philo, mocking her as he moved the screen for her to see.

  One of her steam mechanics had been hooked to a torture device—the rack. She'd seen Lysimachus use a rack in Pompey's square before. The victims' arms and legs were pulled in opposite directions until the joints separated from the body. The screams of the victims were haunting.

  Heron glanced back toward the passage. The way out of the room was clear, but there was no way she could outpace the two men with her ruined knees, nor carry the tethered Sepharia.

  Philo leaned over and sparked a flint which caught the oil pot on fire beneath the water chamber. "It was quite troublesome to come upon another one of these once you blocked my purchases."

  "And with good reason," she said. "My steam mechanic is meant to free man from the tyranny of slavery, not torture him for the gods' amusement."

  "You mistake my purpose then," said Philo as he whipped a sheet from a nearby table, revealing a host of knives and other jagged implements. "I seek knowledge of a different sort. While you are my teacher in the arts of the mechanical," he bowed, "your knowledge of the inner workings of Man pales beneath my sun."

  "So you whore yourself to the temples in exchange for bodies to experiment upon?"

  "Live ones," he said, raising his eyebrows at her. "For I seek to understand how the body works much in the same way I dissect your miracles once you have thrown them away."

  Philo turned to her with outstretched arms. "Soon I will be presenting the Great Library with a series of tomes titled Man, An Exploration."

  He moved closer to Heron, smiling wickedly. "No longer will Heron of Alexandria's name be spoken on the lips of her citizens. Instead, they will speak of Philo of Alexandria, the greatest scholar of the body physiks."

  Ghet tilted his head, listening to distant noises. "I must go up and check on the state of the war for Alexandria. That pesky Northman of yours has created quite a stir."

  Heron thought she was to be left with the unarmed Philo, when Ghet snapped his fingers and two temple guards appeared and restrained her.

  The cane was stripped from her and in short order, she was strapped to the contraption, her arms and legs splayed out and constrained by manacles.

  The steam mechanic had roared up to speed, requiring Philo to shout above its noise. "I can't wait to peer into your magnificent brain."

  The tides had turned so quickly, Heron barely had time to catch her breath. One moment she was planning escape using her greatest invention to foil her captors, the next she was strapped to an ancient iron torture device waiting for the cruel attentions of her captor.

  Heron looked up.

  Philo held a short bladed paring knife over her.