Stephana floated back what would have been a step or two, and looked at him. Her silvered hair hung loose down her back the way he bad loved to see it. Her eyes seemed larger and more shadowy than he remembered. In her hands she held a red rose, the blossom resting between her breasts.
Slowly Marric's arms fell to his sides. "Have . . . have you really come back to me?" he asked. "Why can I not hold you?"
Stephana moved closer to him. He was aware of her presence only by a faint sensation of mist that brushed his face as she raised her hand to stroke his cheek. And the scent of roses, even in this wraithform it lingered about her. She gazed up at him, and though he could see her face clearly, he could not read her expression.
"What becomes of me now, love?" he asked "Do you come to tell me?"
Stephana laughed very softly. "I am so new here, I can scarcely know what will befall me. The powers say I am to guide people."
"Can you be my guide?" Marric broke in eagerly.
"Oh my dearest, I wish I could! But yours is such a powerful fate that you will need a wiser guide than I, one long used to such a task. I . . . I but returned this one time to thank you." Her face blazed with such love and joy that Marric gasped. This was Stephana as she really was, untrammeled by the bonds of her flesh and the memories of her last life, free to express the joy in her heart fully.
"To thank me?"
"For freeing me! I told you: it was destined that I direct all this final life toward helping one person. If my courage held, I would bring about his triumph and my own release. At first, I feared you. Mor—when you were Mor, you needed so much from me—love, pity, even cruelty, so you would live on. You wanted me, and I could not refuse you." Once again Marric felt mist brush his face. "So we have our victories now, you and I."
She started to drift away.
"Do you still love me?" he called after her
"More than ever."
"But is this all for us? Will you never come to me again?"
Marric asked. His hands went out toward her. Again he touched nothing.
"I should be grieved, beloved, if you did not remember me. But I should be even more grieved if you remembered nothing else. Such as this."
Marric followed her to the fountain. Stephana raised her hands above it. The water splashed down, then clouded into vision of a man and a woman whose hair was golden, almost brighter than the circlets they wore. And standing between them, Alexa.
"There lies your future!" Stephana exclaimed. "When you feel most lonely, think of it. The gods bless you and cherish you, Marric, as I do.
Then she was gone. "Wait!" he cried. That woke him to the light of day.
The peacock mosaic on the floor shone as blindingly as the sunlight on the faint edge of the sea.
At the heavy door the captain of the watch knocked three times. Marric's servants entered to prepare him for his triumph. Caius Marcellinus entered with them. So did Nicephorus. Marcellinus wore the white and gold of the Candidatoi, Nicephorus a blue robe. I will have Nico take the belt of civil service before long. I want him nearby. Marric would tell him later.
"Your family, Nico?"
"They await your pleasure outside." Nicephorus smiled. There has been a short delay. The bearmaster is insisting that he inspect the quarters assigned to your bear before he takes his place in the procession."
Marric drank wine and indicated that the other men join him, despite the shock of the cubiculars in attendance. Then they dressed him in a long, tight-sleeved tunic of white silk that rested easily on his scarred back. The marks of the lash on their ruler also shocked his attendants. Marric listened to details of his triumph. He would descend to the harbor and sail toward the Golden Gate. Through it, as befitted a conqueror, he would enter his city.
"As if I had not already been living here for months," he remarked. Nicephorus laughed. Even Marcellinus managed a faint smile. The servants were shocked. Marric assumed they would grow used to it.
Absurd, this ceremony—or was it? The people needed public affirmation that the land was back in the keeping of its rightful lord, or of law, as old Audun might say. In one sense, Marric could not be emperor until he submitted to the ritual. Call it another form of the initiation he had been denied, one that he was competent to handle now.
He waved away the hovering servants and put on gold-embroidered scarlet shoes himself. Then he stood and allowed them to drape the mantle of Empire over his shoulders. It had been miraculously cleansed of the grime and smoke of his passage through the inner ways. Only a faint trace of blood on the breast showed that it had ever been used to wrap a dead seeress.
The garments, Marric realized, were similar to a priest's robes. The thought amused him. But that was proper. A ruler consented to be the channel on earth between his realm and the gods.
He was to be crowned today! Why was he so calm. Surely he might expect to feel something more. If only Alexa stood beside him, arrayed as empress in the robes of Isis, while they received the homage of the crowd and the ambassadors, he might not feel so lonely.
"Parade armor is on board ship, sire," Marcellinus reminded him.
Respecting Marric's mood, Nicephorus followed him out silently. He presented his family: two daughters, a young son, and Ariadne, his wife. She was not pretty, but her face was gentle and kind. Daphne stood beside her and held the younger girl's hand.
A vindictive whisper distracted Marric's attention from his friend's family.
"No! Even if Irene did seize power, she is to be buried honorably," he ordered. "I will not begin my reign with an outrage." The minister bowed and fled to see to it.
The archons of the fleet saluted Marric. They brought him on board a great, gilded dromond with purple sails and trappings. It glided softly in the water of the Bosphorus, ahead of many other ships. All along the seawall soldiers cheered. The townspeople rang bells and wooden semantrons until the air echoed with their welcome.
They landed at Hebdomon. Marric changed into a purple tunic, gold-washed parade armor, and a helmet onto which a crown sparkling with amethysts had been fitted. The Varangians awaited him. They were clad in dress scarlet. Their lance points and axes had been touched up with gold leaf. The Candidatoi stood nearby with swords drawn for the triumphal entry. Marric ordered them sheathed: no naked weapons would be allowed into the city today.
They brought him a white horse to ride, an Arab, all prance and fiery nostrils. A heavy necklet of pearls encircled its arched neck. Marric mounted, and the parade formed up behind him—the Varangians and Candidatoi nearest, followed by a train of other soldiers, officers of the civil service, and patricians. Riding among the foreign nobles on a horse that almost sagged beneath his great weight was Audun Bearmaster. The men nearest him kept a respectful distance from the white bear that danced behind Audun's horse at the end of a gold chain. Sometimes the bear walked upright. At other times it scrambled about on all fours, scattering people to the right and left. Ellac and Uldin led a troop of riders who wore their bows unstrung in token of peace. Even the rusty coats of the steppe ponies had been brushed into something approaching a shine.
The procession entered the city. Along the line of march people had hung their choicest tapestries: embroideries and rugs from Persia, silks from Babylon. Every balcony held men and women dressed in their finest. Children tossed flowers and perfumes at the men below.
Outside the Golden Gate, Marric dismounted before the Temple of Horus. Before entering the temple, he removed his sword and prostrated himself humbly. He could not believe that he had ever scoffed at these ceremonies. Now priests bearing the emblem of the hawk joined the procession. Marric mounted and rode toward the Golden Gate. Before entering, he bowed to his city as if saluting an overlord. The priestesses of Isis draped him and his men with garlands. Children nearby scattered roses and sweet herbs.
There had been a time not long since when the scent of roses had meant things quieter, less glorious, but infinitely more to be cherished. For the people cheering,
Marric was the gods' representative on earth, not a man. He would almost have traded it for the sight of one slender, silver-haired woman. But she had died to bring him to this moment. He must not cheapen her gift.
Past obelisks and fountains, beneath the huge triumphal arch of the Golden Gate, Marric rode. Finally the procession reached the main square.
A booth had been built near the Temple of Osiris. The high priest advanced. He bore in outstretched hands the diadem that had last rested on an empty throne. He looked fierce, satisfied, as he laid the crown on Marric's brow.
Accept my life, Marric prayed. There would be no journey to World's End, no gentle-voiced lover, nothing beyond his duties for him now. And he must be content. He hoped the priest was satisfied. They had both waited for this moment.
One of the protonotaries handed him a lance and he climbed up the steps to the temple. One by one, the captives from Irene's reign were brought before him. Protocol called for Marric to remain motionless, unseeing, while soldiers cast the prisoners down beneath his foot. Marric stood motionless as his man moved the lance he held until its gilded point touched the captives' throats in token of the empire's power to take their lives. The crowd cheered. Marric awoke slightly from the trance in which he had ridden and received the adulation of the city. He smiled as mechanically as the metal lions he had admired as a boy and laid the lance aside. The high priest nodded in approval. Judgment there would be, and retribution but on captives he had taken by himself, like the pirates he had vowed to sweep from his seas.
The foreign ambassadors were pleased, too. Audun's laugh bellowed out. Finally, when the protonotaries finished handing out the ten thousand loaves Marric had waked to news of, he was free to ride toward the Hippodrome in a four-horse chariot. He shocked a few dignitaries by driving it himself.
Snapping the reins over the backs of the four white stallions, Marric drove out into the arena. Faster and faster the horses ran about the spina while the crowd roared approval. The wind against his face refreshed him. For the first time that day his smile was unforced. Then he left his chariot, almost regretfully, for the royal box.
Into the tiers below crowded the rest of the procession, even the captives. Now the hippodrome was dazzling with the bright clothing of racing factions, tumblers, jugglers, and dancers. The actors filed by. One of them caught Marric's glance and waved at him. It was the man who had played Xuthus. Good work, he seemed to say, one artist's approval of another.
Marric flung back his head and laughed, his detachment gone. Indubitably historians would call this the supreme achievement of his life. He would wager that Nicephorus was already honing phrases for the inevitable biography. In it he would have to be the emperor, not the man—even though Nico knew better.
He rose from his throne, went to the front of the kathisma, and held up his arms for silence.
"Emperor you hail me, and emperor I am!" he shouted to his people. "I am Marric Antonius Alexander, son of Alexander and Antonia, who rule beyond the horizon while I, as Horus-on-Earth, am vicegerent here. But where is my empress?"
He paused to let tension build in the waiting crowd. Of course they had heard the rumors that Irene's creatures had spread. They must be wondering. For if the emperor were necessary to this land, equally so was the empress.
"Listen to a vision revealed to me this very night. Alexa, rightful Isis, still lives!"
The crowd's frenzied cheers silenced Marric, but only for a brief while.
"Guided by Audun, Bearmaster of the Aescir and a great friend of our house, she passed into the kingdom of the West, into the Misty Isles where the rulers honor her as the favored daughter of the Goddess. "I"—He would not use the "we" of imperial propriety; "we" would wait for Alexa's return—"swear to you that I shall not rest until I have gone into the West and, just as Isis restored Osiris to his people, brought back the princess to rule at my side."
As he had the night he played Apollo in this very arena, Marric felt himself united to his audience by ground swells of emotion, deep, tidal surges of rightness. They channeled from his people into him, and from him out again to nourish them.
What if Irene had cursed him never again to know peace? This union was enough for him—almost.
"So I swear to you, this first day of my reign!"
Marric flung wide his arms as if acclaiming his subjects. Sunlight struck his shoulders, hot and blissfully welcome as he stood there. He was not certain whether he was the offering or the god's substitute to whom the offering was made.
Then the deep kinship between land and lord overwhelmed him. The violent sunlight cascaded down on emperor and empire and, for the moment at least, fused them into unity.
THE END
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Byzantium's Crown Page 27