"Are you a king?" The Queen tilted her head to one side, looking upon him with bright eyes. "Do you rule, with a scepter, with laurel, holly and gold in your hair?"
"I speak for my people, lady Aia, but I am not a... king. We have no king, not now."
The Queen's nostrils flared slightly, intrigued, and she stepped closer. Shemuel froze, remaining quite still, and the woman—hair hanging long around her face—circled him, tasting the air.
"You are lying." Her voice was intimate and he shuddered involuntarily. The Queen stepped away to the window. She looked down, upon the white clouds and the pine-clad slopes, her arms spread wide, hands resting on the chipped, dark gray stone. "We could strike a bargain, rev Shemuel. My aegis could watch over your people, my children could run in the woods, watching and listening for your enemies. Would that ease your mind? Make you feel safe?"
The man laughed, though it cost him carefully husbanded breath to do so. "As safe as any baker's pie! No, Queen of Aia, we will look after our own business and let you to yours. Let us say this—the people of the valleys will say nothing of what they might see on the peaks, and those living among the clouds will say nothing of what transpires below."
One of the Queen's eyebrows inched up, an alizarin wing on a white unwrinkled forehead. "You are a scholar, rev, but you make me wonder—is there aught to see below, in your villages and farms? This has ever been a land for those seeking sanctuary. Do you conspire, down under the clouds? Do you plot? Do you dream glorious, violent dreams, there in your whitewashed houses?"
"No." Shemuel met her eyes. "Do you?"
The Queen shook her head and for an instant, as the moon might break through racing clouds, there was great weariness on her face. "I am done with such follies," she said.
"Very well." The rev stood, swaying slightly. "Then nothing moves in the ruin of old Montsegur."
The Queen took Shemuel by the arm, lifting him effortlessly. "And below, among the hidden valleys, there is no 'beloved one.' I will keep your secret, rev, as you keep mine."
The rev nodded, then walked to the door. Herrule was already waiting, a looming dark shape.
"Carry him," the Queen said. "Take him home, safe and swift."
The Walach nodded and, despite Shemuel's weak protests, swung the old man up onto his broad back. The Walach grinned, then sprang away, taking the steps two and three at a time. Shemuel was clinging tightly to the furry pelt, eyes screwed shut, when the Queen lost sight of them on the mountain path.
"So..." muttered the Queen. "Dare I rest?" She went to the window facing the east. By rights, she should not yearn for sleep. An ancient enemy was awake, prowling the world, growing stronger with each day. Yet, such exhaustion filled her limbs and dragged at her thoughts, she could not stomach the thought of the struggle to come. "That daywalker child will be alone..."
Not too long ago, the Queen matched her power against the Lord of the Ten Serpents and only barely survived. Their test of wills had been an unwelcome revelation. Centuries had passed since the last time she bent her power to its destruction, and in that long endless time, her own strength faded, while the old enemy grew.
Is my time past? The Queen bent her head, unwilling to admit the years might tell upon her, as they did upon the daywalker children. Is there a length to my days? I should not have matched strength against strength with that... thing. Not alone. But who could help me? The others are all dead or passed away...
Even the thought of battle made her weary. She longed to sleep, to rest and let the world pass on, without her watchful eye. Below the broken tower there was a crypt and a tomb, where a scented bed already lay, girded round with signs and symbols of her own devising. There, on silk and golden thread she might take her ease, far from the brilliant sun, while her children kept a vigil over her.
If darkness comes this far... then Rome is overthrown and the boy has failed. Will there be life, then? I might drown in night, while I sleep, and never feel the passing day. And I am so tired.
The grim thought offered release from the cares of the world. The Queen turned away from the window in the ruined wall, and descended the stairs, thin arms wrapped across her chest. Around her, the fortress groaned and creaked with ancient voices. The faint residue of ghosts lingered, shimmering with pain and a terrible death in fire. She ignored them and continued to descend, down into close, clammy darkness.
I will sleep, if only for a little time, and regain my strength.
CHAPTER SIX
Constantinople, Among the Ruins
Stone ground against stone, spilling fine granite dust into the pit. A dozen men, stripped to the waist, hauled on guide ropes twisted around the huge block. Above, a wooden crane towered over the ruins, secured to old marble pillars rising towards a vanished ceiling.
"Heave!" The foreman cracked a short whip in his hand. The block trembled, swinging to and fro, casting a long shadow down into the recess of the excavation. Sections of broken floor—all sparkling tesserae and geometric patterns—jutted from a rubble of brick and roofing tile. Everything was stained and blackened by fire. Down at the bottom of the pit, men were digging, filling leather buckets with scraps of leather, dirt, moldy books, sections of splintered wood. "Heave!"
The granite block—twelve feet long and two-by-six in cross-section—rose up. High above, heavy cables squealed through pulleys greased with pig fat. Out of sight of the pit, hundreds of men strained against the cables, bare feet digging into the rubble, muscles stiff with effort. The block rose jerkily, and the foreman's face beaded with sweat, watching the stone sway back and forth. "Keep 'er steady!"
The block rose up, swaying over the lip of the pit, and more men were waiting, drawing ropes tight, easing the granite over solid ground. The foreman stared up, blood draining slowly from his face as the sharp-edged shadow drifted across him, and then the granite block was gone. It was dropped clear, shaking the earth with a dull boom as it crashed down into some useless part of the ruin sprawling in all directions from the huge pit.
The foreman steadied himself against a translucent sheet of green Cosian marble. The elegant stonework was badly damaged and spidered with long, milky cracks. A statue's arm emerged from the tumulus nearby, lifelike pink hand raised towards the sky. The debris pile groaned, shifting with the shock of the granite falling into an abandoned ornamental pool. Dust spurted from cracks in the rubble, then drifted hazily in the air. The foreman wiped his brow, glad the day's work had gone without injury. So far.
Below him in the pit, men crawled over every surface with brooms and shovels, carefully sifting through the rubble. Another crane carried a long succession of leather buckets, suspended from iron hooks, swaying, up out of the excavation. At the top of the pit, two scrawny bald men worked ceaselessly, catching the buckets, slipping them from the hooks, then dumping the contents—dirt, gravel, shell-like marble fragments, broken tile, wadded-up pages of papyrus and parchment, twisted bits of leather and metal—onto the top of a long, sloping wooden frame. The frame sat on stout legs and the bottom was covered with a mesh of closely set metal wire—in itself worth a vast sum. Ten men shook the frame from side to side with a rolling motion. Dirt rained out of the bottom of the mesh, and all of the detritus of the excavation tumbled and slid down towards the end of the sieve.
At the bottom of the frame, under the watchful eye of a dozen brawny men in full head-to-toe armor—the closely set, overlapping enameled plates of the Persian clibanarius—four women bent over a large circular bronze bowl. Fragments of stone and glass and metal spilled into the bowl in a constant stream, making a tinny, ringing sound. The women's hands were busy, sorting metal from wood, leather from parchment. Everything not metallic was pitched downslope, onto a swiftly rising midden spilling away across the smashed, burned gardens of the Bucoleon Palace.
The metal—bronze, iron, copper—was tossed into a fluted, elegant urn, which held a steadily accumulating collection of metal bits and pieces. The women worked quickly, trying to keep u
p with the endless stream of buckets.
One of them caught a gleam of bronze in the spillage and snatched it up. The fragment was triangular, with a blunted tip, and four well-polished sides. Her dead eyes registered the gear tooth, and then her hand—spotted with patches of black hair-like spores—flipped it unerringly into the urn. When the urn was full, a pair of diquans hoisted it with a rope and, straining, picked their way to the south, along a walkway of boards and chipped slabs of buff-colored marble, towards an arcade of arched pillars.
A vase of red porphyry replaced the urn, immediately chiming with the sound of falling metal.
All around the ruin, at the eastern end of the dead city, the army of Persia was busy, swarming like ants across a giant's tumbled larder. There were other excavations underway, sorting through the destruction. A forest of cranes loomed over the old palaces. Thousands labored feverishly, for their master had bidden them to haste, and those still living desired only to continue breathing and seeing the blue sky.
The dead did not care, and they worked all the harder, for his will was upon them.
—|—
The two diquans reached the edge of the ruins, where a long arcade of pale white marble was still standing atop a seawall. Blue water sparkled through the arches, slim pillars framing a view of the Asian shore of the Propontis. Many ships with triangular sails and low, sleek hulls moved on the waters, busy ferrying the loot of the Eastern capital across the strait. In the shade of the domed roofs, the diquans set down their burden, then tipped the urn, spilling hundreds of tiny fragments across a smooth floor.
Scraps and broken bits of bronze and copper bounced across black-and-white squares, some sliding to the foot of a heavy wooden table topped with a travertine slab. A figure stood at the head of the table, brown arms braced against the cool stone. The Persian knights did not look upon the shape—a man, muscular and bronzed by the sun, his head enclosed in an iron jackal mask—and bowed nervously to the shadows before hurrying away. Beneath the arches and domes, the air was very cold, and the bright sunlight on the water seemed dim.
The broken tooth bounced across the floor and then sprang into the air as if seized by a ghostly hand. Unerringly, the metal piece flew up, shining in the dim light, then settled onto the tabletop. The travertine was covered with concentric rings of bronze and iron, eight in all, radiating out from the smallest arc—barely the width of a woman's hand—to an outer layer, incomplete, almost four feet across. The gear slowed, drifted this way and that, then rattled to rest along the fringe of a bronze wheel, joining an even dozen of its fellows. The fragment fit perfectly.
The jackal remained still, though the air around him shimmered and trembled as a heat haze does upon the open desert. The remainder of the debris on the floor rustled, sliding across the marble tiles, then drifted up like a cloud of flies and fell, sparkling, into the sea below the palace. Waves lapped against house-sized blocks of granite and limestone, and golden lions stared down from alcoves among the pillars surmounting the seawall.
"Ah..." breathed a laughing voice in the shadow. "You must be patient, dear Arad, our enemy took some pains to destroy this treasure. Many days of sorting may pass, before your task is done."
The jackal-headed man did not respond, remaining still and silent at the head of the table.
In the shadows, the speaker moved, rising and gliding to the table. A handsome fine-boned face looked down upon the ruined device, thin lips quirking up in amusement. Long-fingered hands drifted over the surface of the corroded, scorched bronze, a thin gold bracelet circling one wrist. The skin was dusky, olive, but mottled and sometimes—as the figure passed slowly around the table—gleamed and rippled, as if fine translucent scales lay just under the skin. "But soon this will be complete, and you may turn your attention to other tasks."
Dahak, the Lord of the Ten Serpents, beloved servant of the King of Kings, Shahr-Baraz, smiled with genuine humor, looking down upon the broken fragments of the ancient device. "This pretty will be sent east, to the forges of Damawand and there—by my foresight—workmen wait, ready to restore it to working condition."
"And then, my lord? How will this trinket serve you?"
A second figure emerged from the shadows; a young woman, hair dark and glossy, high-cheeked face turned dark by the sun. Her eyes glittered, reflecting the blue waters. Armor clinked as she moved, gliding to the opposite edge of the table. A dark silk cloak lay over her shoulders, and a corselet of silver girded her breasts. She watched Dahak with a calm, even placid expression. "So much effort is poorly spent, for a toy."
"Something old, dear Queen, something I thought lost." Dahak answered genially, though an air of irritation suffused the line of his body. "Not a toy, but a tool. A powerful tool." The creature in the shape of a man passed his hand across the fragments and they gleamed with an inner light. The radiance filled in the missing pieces of the disks, the teeth and gears and rotating mechanisms. For a brief moment, the thing seemed whole and complete, but then the light faded away again and there was only a profusion of broken parts on the tabletop.
"This device—in my youth they were called the duradarshan—allows an adept to look upon that which is far away, even if hidden or concealed. Each Circle of the City held a sanctuary, and in each Temple of Sight stood an Eye, whirling and golden." The creature's voice changed subtly as it spoke, gaining a different timbre and tone, suggesting enormous age.
The young Queen watched the sorcerer with masked, clouded eyes. At times they seemed to be an electric blue, at others a soft brown. Though she stood beside the jackal, she did not acknowledge the beast-man's presence. "You may look upon your enemies, then, and spy out their intent, their plans, their dispositions... all in safety."
"Yes, and more may be accomplished, if this one's siblings may be found." Dahak grinned, and the air around him clouded with a faint haze. A whispering sound, the faint speech of myriad insects, filled the air. The thin hands drifted over the debris again, and the light flickered down. "I can almost feel them, though the connection is weak, very weak. But in time, this one shall be whole and the others will be revealed to me."
"Can they see you, my lord?" The Queen's chin rose, a faint challenge in her voice. "Isn't it dangerous to reveal yourself by such means?"
Dahak's eyes narrowed to slits and his nostrils flared. Again, the air trembled around him. He moved a hand. "I am shadow, slave, where I move nothing marks my passage! A ghost leaves no trace, seeing all secrets, knowing all things!"
The Queen staggered, her face twisted in pain. Soundlessly she turned, though her fingers clutched at the edge of the table, and faced the jackal. Arad turned as well, also against his will, and the dark eyeholes of his mask stared upon the Queen. Dahak laughed and clapped his hands in delight. His good humor was restored, seeing the jackal kneel, and the Queen's face crease in sorrow, thin silver tears streaking her high cheekbones.
"I am the master here, dear Zenobia. Do not make yourself tiresome."
Dahak turned to look out over the sprawled, tumbled ruin of the palaces of the Eastern Emperors, and beyond, to the ranks of red-roofed houses and the colorful red and orange and blue gleam of temples on the hills of the city. "I do not need either of you, though it warms my heart to see you, at last, reunited."
Zenobia gasped, unable to move her head. Her eyes were a clear blue, pinched at the edges and filled with sorrow. "You'd discard useful... tools... because they took skill... to use? Your will is... our will... yet we have eyes to see and minds to think..."
Dahak's face contorted in disgust, and he hissed. "I have learned this lesson! Loyal Khadames taught me well—I have not forgotten the sacrifice of the Sixteen—but you..."
"I... what?" Zenobia managed a sickly grin, tears streaming down her cheek. "I... challenge you, lord of darkness? I... question and argue? You have need, lord, of more than servants. You need allies or..." She coughed, bright blood flecking her lips. Dahak relented, seeing the girl's body was failing between the pressu
re of his will and the Queen's. "...you would already possess the world."
Dahak spat on the floor and turned away, brow clouded with anger.
Another pair of knights approached, moving with a heavy step up the walkway, shoulders bent under the weight of the red vase. The jackal rose stiffly and resumed his position at the head of the table. The Queen gasped and fell against the tabletop, supporting herself with a white-knuckled hand.
"You should thank me," the sorcerer continued, "both of you longed to be reunited. And here you are!"
The Queen did not bother to hide her fury. But her eyes still avoided Arad.
—|—
The King of Kings sat on the steps of the Senate House, eating olives and cheese from a basket. Shahr-Baraz was a huge man, well over six feet in height, with broad, powerful shoulders and a trim waist. Despite the heat of the afternoon, he was clad in a hauberk of gilded overlapping steel plates and long, woolen leggings. Big boots, scuffed with wear, the leather turned almost black, stuck out in front of him. The olives were sharper tasting than in his homeland, far to the east, but he ate them by handfuls, spitting pits onto the paved oval forum surrounding the milestone at the heart of Constantinople.
He was watching rows of men hauling crates and boxes and trunks out of the front of the ruined Great Palace. A series of violent explosions had ripped through the huge structure, collapsing domes, setting fires in many portions of the sprawling complex. The forum had also suffered—great craters yawned in the limestone paving—exposing hidden tunnels and sewers. Despite the destruction, the Persian army was busy both in the ruins and in those buildings that had survived intact. The Emperors of the East had ruled from Constantinople for almost three hundred years—rarely stinting in ornamenting their residences with treasure. Shahr-Baraz spit out a pit, then smoothed down his long, tusk-like mustaches. He grinned, mentally counting load after load of gold and silver coin, the rugs, the tapestries, the bolts of raw silk, the jewels, the fine statues and paintings—all the loot of a vast Empire.
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