by Jim Butcher
The archaeologist, a man who had dedicated his life to studying the detritus Gaius’s people had left behind, turned and walked away, without ever knowing he’d been in the presence of a onetime Roman centurion. He’d weep if he ever found out.
Gaius made sure the gates were closed behind him and went into the tunnels beneath the palace. The vaulted spaces were lit only by faint emergency lights at the intersections. Columns made forests of shadows.
He had to orient himself. The main gallery had been turned into some kind of gift shop or market. The eastern chambers had become an art gallery, scattered with unremarkable modern sculptures, indulgent satire. But along the western corridor, he found a familiar passageway, and from there was able to locate the series of chambers he needed. He reached the farthest, not taking time to glance at any of the exhibits—he knew it all already. Then he counted seven stones along the floor to the right spot on the wall, two bricks up. Anyone who’d come along this passage and happened to knock on this row of stones would have noticed that one made a slightly different sound. A more hollow sound. But in all that time, it seemed that no one had ever done so.
He drew a crowbar from inside his jacket and used it to scrape out mortar and grime from around the brick, then worked to pry the brick free. He had to lean his body into it; the wall had settled over the centuries. Dust had sealed the cracks. But he was strong, very strong, and with a couple of great shoves and a grunt, the brick slipped out and thudded to the ground at his feet.
Gaius reached inside the exposed alcove.
A thousand disasters could have befallen this site. A dozen wars had crossed this country since the last time he’d been here. But he’d chosen his hiding place well. The palace area had been continually lived in and not left for ruin. The town was off the main crossroads of Europe. Armies generally didn’t have a reason to level a coastal village with no strategic value. The place was still mostly intact, mostly preserved. Even better, over the last couple of centuries it had been cleaned up and maintained.
And in all that time, no one had discovered what he’d left buried. He drew out his prize and held it up to check its condition.
The artifact was a clay lamp, terra-cotta orange, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. A spout at one end would hold a wick; oil would be poured in through the top. It was a poor man’s lamp, too plain and commonplace for wealth. The designs imprinted around the top were of fire. The thing was dusty, covered in grime, but otherwise in good shape. Just as he’d left it. A couple of swipes with his gloved hand cleared some of the dirt. There’d be plenty of time later to clean it more thoroughly. It didn’t need to be clean, it needed to be intact, safe in hand. The Manus Herculei. The Hand of Hercules, which he would use to bring fire down upon the Earth.
If archaeologists had found it, they’d have tagged it, cataloged it. Stuck it behind glass or simply put it on a shelf in some climate-controlled archival storage. He might have had a harder time claiming it then, and some of the artifact’s power might have diminished. But this . . . this was the best outcome he could have hoped for, and it made him wonder if there wasn’t in fact some weight of destiny on his side. He was meant to do this, and he was being guided.
He had been on this path, unwavering, for two thousand years.
79 CE
When Gaius Albinus arrived in Pompeii, he had not aged in eighty years. He still looked a hale man in his thirties. A bright centurion of Rome, though he’d left his armor behind decades before. Who needed armor, when one was practically immortal?
He’d never wanted to be immortal. He’d wanted to die for Rome. That chance had been taken from him by a monster. Since then, he had looked for purpose. Some kind of revenge against the one who had done this. Unfortunately, Kumarbis was as indestructible as he was.
The force of Gaius’s rage surprised him. He’d never had a reason to be angry before. When he looked for an outlet, something he could break or destroy to somehow quiet his fury, he found one worthy target: the world. If one was going to be immortal, one might as well use that time to attempt the impossible.
In Herculaneum, he rented a house. This was a port village up the coast from the more decadent, raucous Pompeii. Here, he’d have quiet and not have to answer so many questions. The place was small, just a couple of rooms on the outside of town, but it had a courtyard behind high walls. In privacy, he could burn herbs and write on the flagstones in charcoal, washing them off when he finished.
Then he learned to make lamps.
He couldn’t simply buy one in a market and have it be pure, so he went out one night to a pottery workshop and persuaded the master there to help him. The potter was skeptical, even with Gaius’s particular brand of persuasion. Gaius was well dressed and held himself like a soldier—why would he need to learn to make lamps? “It’s a hobby,” Gaius said, and the man seemed to accept that. The potter taught him to fashion objects from clay, bake them, fire them. His first few efforts were rough, lopsided. One shattered in the kiln.
“Practice,” the potter said. “Even a simple thing takes practice. Keep trying.”
Gaius understood that, and at the end of a week of working long nights he had a lamp, all of his own making. He paid the potter well, which seemed to confuse the man.
That was the first step. Next: the inscription.
He washed; wore a light, undyed tunic; and went barefoot. The summer air was thick, sticky, but his skin was cool, was always cool. He’d taken blood from his servant, who now slept in the house, out of the way. The borrowed strength buoyed him and would be enough to carry him through the night.
A full moon rose as dusk fell, and the smallest hint of sunset still touched the deep blue sky when Gaius arranged his tools in the courtyard. Charcoal, candles, string, braziers, and incense. His lamp. He had a hundred incantations to learn, a hundred symbols to memorize and write, then write again, until he had them perfect. Practice, as the potter had told him.
Such good advice.
He had a lamp to infuse with power.
Kneeling, tools in hand and bright moonlight silvering the courtyard, he hesitated. The hair on his arms stood up, and a sudden tension knotted his shoulders. It was the sensation of being stalked by a lion. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder.
The danger was outside the courtyard, approaching. If he quieted himself, he could sense every beating heart in the town, he could follow the scent of warm blood and the sound of breathing to every hidden soul. But the thing approaching had no heartbeat, and its blood was cold. The hold it had on Gaius Albinus was difficult to define, but even after decades, the bond remained and called to him.
He set down his tools and marched to the courtyard door, wrenched it open, and looked.
An old man, his skin shriveled, his bones bent, pulled himself along the alley wall, creeping from one shadow to the next on crooked limbs. Hairless, joints bulging, he should not have been alive. His ragged linen tunic hung off him like a crucified body. This was the source of nightmare tales that kept children awake, the stories of ghouls and demons that hid under beds and in wells.
Frozen, Gaius watched him approach. His teeth ground, his jaw clenched with rage, but he couldn’t move, he couldn’t flee. He ought to murder this monster. But he couldn’t.
The shriveled old man heaved up against the wall and stared back at him. Laughing, he pointed a crooked finger. “Salve, Gaius Albinus, salve! I found you. Given enough time, I knew I would find you. And, my dear son, all I have is time.”
“I am not your son,” Gaius said reflexively, as he had done a hundred times before, uselessly. He glanced around the street; he didn’t want anyone to witness this.
“Yes, you are. I made you. You are my son.”
The old man, Kumarbis, looked desiccated, as if he had been wandering in a desert, baked by the sun. Which was impossible for one like him. This meant he had not been eating, going weeks between feeding on blood instead of days. He was starved; he was weak. How was he sti
ll existing?
Something dug hooks into Gaius, a connection between them that he’d never be able to deny, however much he wanted to. A feeling: compassion. Gratitude. A tangle emanating from this creature, binding them together. Gaius had tried to escape these lines of power, fed through blood and woven with terrible magic, created when Kumarbis transformed him.
“No! I disavow you. I broke from you!”
“You are my son—”
“You are a mockery—you are not my father!” Gaius’s father had died decades ago, never knowing what had become of his son, who’d vanished into the service of Rome.
The old man stepped forward, reaching an angular hand, grinning skull-like. “You owe me . . . hospitality. The tribute due to a master from his progeny. You owe me . . . sustenance.” Horribly, he licked his peeling lips.
“You fended for yourself for a millennium before you ruined me. I will give you nothing.”
Perversely, the old man chuckled, the sound of cracking papyrus. “I knew you were a strong man, able to resist our bond. Very strong. I knew it. I chose you well.”
“Leave here. Leave. I never want to see you again.”
“Never? Never? Do you know what that means? You are only just beginning to realize what that means. We will always be here, we will always be bound.”
“Come in, get off the street.” Gaius grabbed the old man’s tunic—he refused to touch that leathered skin—and pulled him into the courtyard, slamming the door behind him. The ancient fabric of the tunic tore under the pressure, as if it had rotted in place.
Kumarbis slumped against the wall and grinned at Gaius as if he’d won a prize. “You have servants.”
“They’re mine, not yours.”
“You are mine.”
“I am not.” He sounded like a mewling child.
What he ought to do was drink the old man dry. Suck whatever used-up blood was left in him, destroying him and taking all his power. But he would have to touch the monster for that. And . . . that pull. That bond. It made the very idea of harming the man repulsive. He couldn’t even bear the thought of stabbing him through the heart with a length of wood, putting him out of his misery. The terrible magic of his curse, that he could not bring himself to kill the one being in the universe he most wanted to.
“I don’t have time for this,” Gaius said, turning back to his tools, the mission. He should just buy a slave for the old man to drain and be done with him.
Kumarbis pressed himself against the stone. “What are you doing here, Gaius?”
“Showing my strength. Proving a point.”
Wincing, craning his neck forward, the old man studied what Gaius had prepared, the writing he had begun. “This magic . . . Have I seen anything like it?”
Gaius spared a moment to glare. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Explain this to me.” He seemed genuinely confused, his brow furrowed, a hand plucking at the hem of his garment. “You’re working a spell . . . a spell made of fire?”
“No! I owe you nothing!” He stomped forward, raised his hand to the old man—and could not strike. Fist trembling, he snarled.
A knock came at the door. Both Gaius and Kumarbis froze, looking at each other as if to ask, Were you expecting someone? This night was cursed with disruptions. Gaius went to the door and cracked it open.
“What?”
“May I enter? Am I interrupting anything important?” He seemed like a young man, but Gaius had learned not to trust appearances of age. With his bright eyes set in finely wrought features and the confident stance of a patrician, this man would have been at home in the Forum in Rome. The kind of man who always had a curl at the corner of his lip, as if all he gazed on amused him. His tunic and wrap were expensive, trimmed with gold thread.
“Who are you?” Gaius demanded, and seemingly of its own will the door opened and the stranger stepped inside.
At the same time, Kumarbis dropped to his knees, which cracked on the flagstones.
“Hello there,” the stranger said amiably to him.
“You! It was always you!” the old man cried. “Your voice in the dark, drawing me forward. I tried! Don’t you know I tried to build your army? I tried!”
The stranger’s mouth cracked into a grin, and he turned to Gaius. “Is this man bothering you?”
Some sort of balance tipped in that moment. Gaius felt it in the prickling of skin on the back of his neck. In the way this stranger drew the eye, held the attention, though there seemed to be nothing noteworthy about him.
“Please! Why have you forsaken me?” Kumarbis had prostrated himself and was weeping. It was . . . almost sad.
The stranger said, “I found a stronger man. Or, you did. Thank you for that.” He looked Gaius up and down, as if surveying livestock.
“For thousands of years I’ve—”
“And? Do you expect pity from me?”
“Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . mercy?”
The stranger laughed. “Oh, no, old man. No. Not from me.”
“But—”
“Get out. Go.” The stranger took Kumarbis by the arm and hauled him to his feet. He had no care for brittle bones or bent back. Why should he, when the old man didn’t seem inclined to break? Only to weep.
He pushed the old man out and gently closed the door. Almost, Gaius worried. Where would Kumarbis go? Would he find shelter by daybreak? Would he find sustenance? But no, Kumarbis had survived this long; he didn’t need help. He didn’t need pity.
The stranger turned back to Gaius. “There. Where were we?”
Gaius stood amazed. “Who are you?”
“Call me Lucien,” the man said, smiling like he had something to sell.
“What do you want?”
The man paced around the courtyard, studying the stone walls, looking over the charcoal and candles Gaius had laid out. “That’s not the question. The question is this: What do you want?”
His words held a largeness, a vastness to them that expanded far beyond mere sound. They spoke to the depth of Gaius’s anger, his urge to grab Kumarbis’s skull and smash it against the wall. To break everything that would break, to shatter it all. But a dozen skulls would not satisfy. And rage was unbecoming to a soldier of Rome.
He said, “I want to see how much of the world I can change with my actions.”
“Change?” Lucien said. “Or destroy? I see what you’re doing here—this isn’t change.”
“Destruction is a kind of change.”
“So it is.” His pacing brought him in a spiral to the middle of the courtyard. To the candles, the charcoal, the wax tablet with the symbols Gaius had copied for practice. The precious lamp. For a moment, he was afraid Lucien would break it. That he was some crusader who had somehow gotten wind of his plan.
Lucien had just tossed a two-thousand-year-old vampire out onto the street. Gaius was fairly certain he wasn’t powerful enough to stop this man—this whatever-he-was—from doing whatever he wanted.
Lucien turned to him and stopped smiling. “I know your plan. I support your plan. Be my general, Gaius Albinus. Gather my army for me. And you will have power.”
“What . . . what army?” Gaius asked.
“Ones like you. There are more than you think, and by rights they should serve me. Also the werewolves, the demons, the succubi—”
“Werewolves?”
Lucien smiled. “You’ll meet them soon enough. Use that army, destroy what you must. And hand it all over to me at the end of days. Agreed?”
A cause to march with. Gaius had missed the structure of direction, of orders delivered for a righteous cause. And here this man appeared. This easy, smiling patrician with an answer and quip for everything. Gaius could see a moment, some years or decades—or even centuries—in the future, when Lucien would turn his back on him. Literally throw him onto the street as he had done with Kumarbis. This man used and disposed of tools as needed.
But at least Gaius understood his role here.
Lucien off
ered his hand. “Come, my friend. I can make sure your talents don’t go to waste.”
Stepping forward, Gaius placed his hands between Lucien’s and pledged his loyalty. He was surprised at how warm Lucien’s skin was against his own chilled, bloodless hands. As if the man were made of fire.
And then he was at the door, a light of victory in his face. “Good journeys to you, until next we meet.”
“When will that be?”
Lucien shrugged, his lips pursed. He might have known, he might not have. Maybe he wanted to keep secrets.
Gaius said, “Then I will simply go on as I see fit. Gather this army for you. Gather power.”
“And this,” Lucien said, “proves that I have chosen well this time. Vale, my Dux Bellorum.”
“Vale,” Gaius said softly, but the man was already gone.
Gaius had work to do.
He assumed that Kumarbis still rested in Herculaneum. That he had somehow found a safe place to sleep out the day, as he had every day for the last many hundreds of years. Gaius couldn’t confirm this, and he had no desire to waste time looking for the old man, however much a thread of worry tugged at him. That thread was false, and Gaius owed it nothing. But the suspicion determined the target of his strike. Of his masterpiece.
The next night, he woke at dusk and gathered his tools: flint and steel, chalk and charcoal and ash for making marks, candles for light, his own will for power. The lamp to ignite it all. He slung the bag containing everything over his shoulder, wrapped his cloak around himself, and took the road out of town.
A half hour of walking brought him to a field where goats grazed in the day, at the foot of the great mountain Vesuvius. The eaten-down scrub gave him a surface on which to write, after he kicked away stones and goat droppings. The open space gave him a vista in almost every direction: the lamplight of the towns along the coast, the bulge of the mountain blocking out stars behind him. He had some six hours of night in which to work. He moved quickly but carefully—he had limited time but needed perfection.
Once he began he could not stop. No different than any other campaign march. He cleared a space around twenty cubits across. Marked the center with a stake. Then he began writing in powdered charcoal carefully poured out from a funnel.