Above his head appeared light that formed the manifestation of a giant hawk, sigil of Horus and the emperors. It rose and circled the forum three times. Then, after it had captured everyone's attention, it hovered over Marric's head and cast brilliant golden light upon him to reveal him to the crowd: weary, his face streaked with soot, his mantle scorched and smeared with ash and blood.
"Marric! Emperor!" The voices were joined by a rhythmic clatter of swords against shields as soldiers acclaimed him, too. In a minute they would escape from his control and attack the palace, bringing upon themselves the magical holocaust Marric dreaded.
"Let the crowd go to the palace, but restrain them!" he ordered Marcellinus. He heard his orders being relayed. "Then I want you, Nico, you men too—come with me!"
They ran up the stairs to the high priest.
"Irene used the inner ways to slip in and fire the shrine," Marric spoke fast. "She tried to kill me, damned near did, too. The inner ways, open them to us!"
Against the blasphemy of destroying one of the great centers of Isis worship, what was the lesser hubris of donning the mask of a god? The Osiris priest nodded assent. Marric thought he saw tears in the old man's eyes, then blamed it on the smoke from the ruined temple. There was no time for mourning: the old priest kept secrets. Marric needed, and was agreeing to reveal them.
"I shall lead you as far as I can," he said. "Prince, may the gods favor you in this, as in all else."
Marric passed again within the Temple of Osiris. This time the walls themselves opened to receive him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The high priest led them through the temple and down winding, shallow stairs into the passages. At his urgent command they pressed against the right-hand wall. To their left the way dropped into the echoing darkness of a pit. At another turning, the priest counted the stone blocks, counted them again, and then pressed carefully the beak of a hawk carved in high relief.
As his companions passed, he gestured upward. High overhead, sharp-pointed spears lay ready to fall on any passing by without intimate knowledge of the ways.
These passages reminded Marric of Alexandria, which was to say, of a particularly large and lethal trap.
How many snares were there? Marric did not dare to ask. He had heard old tales of such places, and of traps that men too foolish to know when to keep silent might spring upon themselves.
Many such, said the priest in his mind. Order your people to keep close; blood should not be shed in here by accident.
Marric waved Marcellinus to move in closer. His two—no, three—guards followed. There was something strange about the third man-at-arms, whose mantle almost dragged along the ground. It was Daphne. What was she doing here?
Marric caught Nicephorus' arm and pointed.
You were so intent on following the priest that she escaped your eye. Nicephorus spoke mind to mind. Would you have left her alone in that mob?
Irritation at the girl nettled Marric, she will slow us; one of the men will have to look after her, but he dared not speak. Finally the priest stopped before a carved wall. When he touched various parts of the ideographs that covered it, a block slid aside.
"From here on, you may speak in safety," he whispered. "Through this passage lies the second level of the ways."
"You knew about her!" Marric accused.
"Daphne has a right to be in at the kill," said Nicephorus.
"This is not a hunt!"
"But it is," said the high priest. "You hunt along these tracks to punish the woman who has used unlawful sorcery. She has injured this child too. Let her decide now whether to go on or to turn back."
Marric beckoned to her. "Why, Daphne?" he asked.
Daphne pushed back her tangled hair. For the first time in Marric's acquaintance with her, she dared to meet his eyes. "Prince, you come because you must. These loyal men come with you. Nicephorus comes because he is wise and will never leave you. I am not wise, not very brave—but, oh, master, I loved her too!"
Marric nodded, acknowledging Daphne's claim. When he closed in final challenge with Irene, there should be one witness who was motivated by love, and by love alone.
Caius Marcellinus hissed in impatience. "This is a ridiculous strike force!"
"As the priest says," Marric answered, "we are not a strike force. We are a hunt."
"I will keep up," Daphne promised.
The high priest beckoned them on.
Here the stonework shone with the same light that Marric had seen in the chamber that held the sarcophagus of his aborted attempt at initiation. The light unmarred by shadow daunted him.
"We are nowhere near," the priest reassured him in an undertone.
"Does Irene know these ways?"
"I would be surprised if she did. Many of our walls can be changed. How she learned the inner ways leading to the Temple of Isis I know not; the dark goddess must have revealed them to her. We have all become too slack. Who would ever have thought that the temples must defend themselves against the palace?"
Marric thought of the Greeks who ruled long before the empire was ever formed. Draco had made no laws against the slaying of parents because he thought it a crime too hideous for humans to perform. Like the priests he had been overly trusting.
"This place is warded," Nicephorus whispered. "Feel the power!"
They descended flight after flight of stairs and passed through chambers lined with stones. These levels might be places of study and access to the palace. They were also an efficient line of defense. Marcellinus nodded appreciatively.
"This is a labyrinth," he noted. "I think we have walked a distance much greater than that from the temple to the palace." He waved at his men and at Daphne. "Stay together. Fall behind, and you may wander forever." Fear roughened his voice. Marric could well understand it. What would Caius do against the watcher? Probably no better than he. Marric would be very glad, he decided, to exchange these light-filled passages for honest stone.
By now the regiments and the crowd would have followed the hawk sigil to the palace. Marric could visualize the scene: night paling toward dawn, the golden hawk swooping over the walls, and far below, subjects held barely in check by soldiers loyal to him.
Fierce gladness filled him as he thought of Irene's execution. Both Nicephorus and the priest winced; Daphne looked up in sudden alarm. Some quality in the air or the light down here must intensify thoughts and emotions for those sensitive to them, Marric decided. His emotions burned hotter here the violence of his feelings caused the adepts pain. Then Daphne must have marginal sensitivities, too! He could not consider that.
Power, Marric concluded, created its own backlash. An important lesson for him to learn. He himself would be the backlash for Irene.
They had reached the end of the light-filled corridors and come up against a wall of roughly hewn gray stone.
"Here our defenses end," said the priest. "You will find torches on the other side of this slab. Keep to the right, always to the right, and walk carefully. When faced with a turning, take every third right upward. Nicephorus, do not summon light. Instead, use a torch."
The soldiers, followed by Nicephorus and Daphne, knelt for the priest's blessing. Before he realized, Marric was kneeling, too. Thin hands clasped his temples in a gesture more fierce than the conventional laying-on of hands in benediction. Knowledge of the path ahead entered Marric's mind. He could guide his people into the palace, assuming nothing blocked their way.
The high priest activated the wall mechanism. The stone ground aside slowly, as if long unused. The narrow opening revealed only blackness.
"Daphne, do you come with us?"
Daphne stepped forward into the darkness before the others. She lifted a torch down from the rack she found, and lit it with the flint lying nearby.
When six torches bobbed in the corridor, the priest raised his hand to bless them again. His face, serene against the white light, was the last thing they saw before the stone slab moved back into pl
ace. Then they turned toward the palace.
"What a spot for a fight!" Marcellinus commented. "Ten men at the head of this stair could hold off a regimental wing for hours."
"I do not think Irene has the regiment or ten men to throw at us," Marric said. He started up the first of the many stairways ahead. Three landings, then a turn to the right. Three more flights upward, then right again. It was like climbing through a shell, Marric thought. He halted abruptly. Here the air seemed thicker and fouler. The torch he carried flared, then guttered close to extinction. Now it gave off a graveside glow that drew an answering light from moss on the rotten wood that shored up the walls. Like that dungeon, Marric thought.
"Careful of the air here," said Marric.
"I have patrolled the mines, lord," one of the men spoke up. "This is not—" He screamed, a sound that exploded into a gurgle as he clutched his throat and staggered around the curve of the stairs. Then he fell. His torch dropped like a pale meteor beside him into the pit beside the stairs.
"What made him fall?"
Nicephorus paused beside Marric and extended his own torch. It burnt on unchanged. So did Daphne's. The light, extending out to several feet, showed only one side of the passageway was walled. They walked a winding shelf along a high cliff, it seemed. Daphne dropped her too long cloak and kilted up her skirts.
Keeping close to Nicephorus, Marric ventured up the last few stairs to stand on a narrow walk. A frail bridge arched across an unfathomable gap.
"Quickly." If they stopped to think what might have turned the air foul, what had killed the arms man, they might fall themselves. Marcellinus coughed rackingly. The air was getting worse.
Marric crossed first, followed by Nicephorus. Marric turned and held out a hand to Daphne. He found himself aiding a soldier. He was followed by the second man, then by Marcellinus.
Had Daphne panicked again?
She shook her head. Neither the foul air or vertigo affected her as they had the men. Her torch still burned bravely. Stepping onto the narrow walkway, she balanced as easily as a bazaar urchin walking an orchard wall that separates him from the fruit he wants to steal.
Good girl! Having lit the men's ways, she waited to cross until she was sure of their safety.
Then Marric heard a cracking, as of stone giving way.
"Daphne, quick!" His hand dug into her arm just as the bridge collapsed in on itself. The light from Daphne's torch cast long shadows as it fell.
"Cloaks over your heads," gasped Marcellinus.
Marric gagged at the smell of something dead and long decaying. He steadied Daphne and considered. She was motivated only by love, and did not suffer from the foul air. Nicephorus too appeared untroubled. Whatever it was, it attacked selectively. It was not real in the same way that the soldier it killed had been real: it was a lethal and highly effective sorcery.
Around Marric the air grew fouler and fouler until he collapsed, gasping, on his knees. He grew angry, and his mind whitened almost to unconsciousness. He could not breathe, he was falling, falling into a pit like the man they had lost on the stairs . . .
Nicephorus caught him and held him hard.
"Don't fight it, Mor. Think!"
Think of what? A stinking hold where slaves lay tangled together and a prince had been thrown in among them, had struggled then, too, until Nicephorus had befriended him. A comforting thing to think of. Nico was no warrior; yet he had survived initiation, whereas one bout with the watcher left Marric sick. Strength. Nico had strength enough to adapt and to accept. Stephana too had possessed that sort of strength.
He too—had he not vowed over her body to cease challenging the powers?
Marric drew a deep, shuddering breath. For one moment—sheer indulgence before the real fighting started—he let his head rest against Nicephorus' shoulder. He could hear Daphne's breathy, tremulous voice urging Marcellinus and his men "easy . . . steady now . . . " The priest had been right to refer to the chase through the secret ways as a hunt: as with most hunts, the most patient, not the strongest, were frequently the most successful.
Marric rose gingerly to his feet. To his surprise he still held a torch, had apparently tightened his grip on it as he fell in the same way any man falling from a height will claw loose pebbles and stalks of weeds. He raised the torch over his head and it woke into rich, golden flame.
"Come on," he urged.
The stair turned several more times before walls rose. At the end of a long, straight flight of stairs loomed a door. Nicephorus reached it first and pushed. The door opened only enough to admit a narrow beam of light. Marric saw his companions' faces: Nicephorus, as keen as if he hunted his quarry over a sunlit field; Daphne, the timidity in her expression gone forever; Marcellinus and his surviving man, haggard with the strain that he too felt.
"Stand back, Nico, Daphne. If we put our shoulders to that door, we should be able to move it."
The great door creaked open into a wide hall bare of all furniture, deadfalls, or men-at-arms.
"This is too easy," Marcellinus whispered. "We enter, the door locks behind us, and the red empress sends in her killers."
"The door only locks from this side," said Nicephorus.
"I think it was left unbarred," Marric concluded. "If people win through to the palace, there has to be one last line of defense: nothing to harm friends, but something effective enough to take out some very stubborn enemies. I don't think we're going to face human adversaries here."
"What shall we face, my lord?" the soldier asked fearfully.
The man reminded Marric of himself, resenting the powers of the unseen world, fearing them, and finally beginning to adapt, to accept them and use them to protect himself.
"Feelings," Daphne spoke up. "They will . . . she will send emotions, our own emotions back at us." She snuffed her torch and joined Marric in the wide passage.
"Get back!" The place needed to be tested, and Marcellinus knew it.
"We haven't the time," said Marric. "How long do you think the mob will be held back?"
He strode down the hall. Waves of emotion battered him. First came lust, seeking to tantalize him, then to drain him, but he had known love and could not mistake one for the other. Ambition: but Marric was rightfully the emperor. He sought only to gain what was his. Rage followed, but his thirst for blood seemed to have fallen into the pit in his place. Grief followed, and it hit him hard. He had had no time to mourn Stephana's death. He slackened his pace. Tears he had thought himself unable to shed poured from his eyes. Uncertainty followed grief: his father's misgivings, the priest's concern, Alexa falling into the grip of dark magic. Who was Marric to think that he could prevail, or use the power in his blood without being corrupted by it? Hubris. Hadn't he felt like a god this evening in the Hippodrome? Look what it had cost him. Far better for someone like him to give up and mourn. That way he could do no harm. There was no hope.
No.
Marric would not let his grief destroy him. Stephana would not approve. And despair—the absence of hope—could not be trusted. If a slave, beaten, naked, and dying, could be restored to life and acclaimed as the ruler of Byzantium, there was always hope.
And if he had not summoned whatever magic he could to burn, to rend, to torment after Stephana had died in pain, then he would not.
The despair Irene sent back at him washed through him. Then it ebbed, a catharsis that reassured even as it purified. He would survive all the stronger for his doubts and errors. He reached the end of the hall, and turned to the people who watched him.
"Accept and master anything you feel," he called to them. "Just keep moving."
As Marric's companions crossed, the hall erupted into mass hallucinations. Its dark walls spurted imaginary Greek fire. Huns with arrows on their bowstrings galloped from side to side. Three pirates with scimitars tore a shrieking girl from her grandfather, then despatched him with one blow. The roughly paved floor seemed awash in blood. But the fire did not sizzle flesh, the child screamed s
oundlessly, and the arrows never whizzed out to pierce flesh.
Now Nicephorus extended his hands and summoned a pale golden light that wrapped about him and sent out tendrils to the others.
Do not run!
Marric wanted to shout it. If they panicked, they would slip in the imaginary blood; the arrows and flames would turn real and consume them. Already the fire licked nearer. Nicephorus was weakening from his efforts to protect their party.
Marric took a deep breath, attempting to visualize energy flowing from himself to the scholar. He concentrated on an image of Nicephorus standing firm, arms outstretched to protect his friends. With a glad cry, as if she woke from a nightmare, Daphne freed herself from the barrage in the hall. She walked up to the pirates as they tore the child from the old man again.
"That was years ago," she said. "I have done my grieving. Now I am free. I will pass here." She walked through the illusion and came to stand beside Marric. Taking his hand, she helped him aid Nicephorus as he guided Marcellinus and the soldier through the hallucinations. As they neared, the task became easier. Then the floor seemed suddenly to drop away, as the men relived how their comrade had clutched his throat and fallen into nothingness.
"Steady," Nicephorus murmured. Strength flowed out of Marric into him as Nico tensed for one last effort. Leading the others, he stepped out over the pit that seemed to yawn beneath his feet.
Marric demanded silently that he see paving stones there again instead of emptiness. Gradually the stones solidified. And they were across. Nicephorus slumped against the wall.
"I am sorry, Nico, that there is no time for you to rest," Marric said. "Daphne, help him along. Caius, the gates."
Ahead lay another corridor and a flight of stairs. Thea flung her arm about Nicephorus' waist and started toward it. Marric looked at the stairs. The instincts that had saved him tonight told him that they were clear, that all the killer illusions, all the traps lay behind them, not before them.
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