The Gates of Hell

by Michael Livingston

  Octavian nodded as if this were the most obvious conclusion in the world. “You will do what is right, my brother. I know that you will. You’re a good man, and you always have been. You’re a better man than I ever will be. You’ll do what’s right. You’ll help me avenge these men.”

  Juba felt like a caged animal, looking for a way out. “But the Trident is no use here. There’s no sea. And even if I met this Corocotta, a common legionnaire has a better chance of catching him than I do of using the Trident to kill him.”

  Octavian began to grin. This time when he reached for Juba’s shoulder it was to turn him toward the wagon. He pointed to the crate he’d been staring at so closely. “Look closely at this box, my brother. Tell me what you see.”

  Most of the crate had been burned to crumbled planks of wood mixed with whatever had been inside of it, but one side was still partially intact. There was a black scar across it, a line of fire. “It looks like someone has run a flame across it.”

  “So it does,” Octavian said. “Only—”

  Juba squinted at the line. “Only the scorch doesn’t extend up,” he said. “It’s not right. It’s too even. The flame of a torch would have licked upward.”

  Octavian patted him on the back as if he were a prized student. “Exactly so, my brother. Ever the smart one. You’ve seen in seconds what it took me weeks of visiting such sites to see. What not one of these other fools has yet to see.”

  Juba looked up at him in confusion. “But if not a torch, what?”

  “You know what. You of all people know what.”

  Juba stared for a moment, weighing the impossibilities. But of course Octavian was right, even if he didn’t know what the Shards of Heaven were. If there was a Shard to wield water, and a Shard to harness the wind, then there was a Shard to control fire.

  And Corocotta had it.

  6

  THE ASTROLOGER’S PLAN

  ALEXANDRIA, 26 BCE

  From the stone bench in the middle of the library he’d once hoped would be his, Thrasyllus watched Apion lead the strange man up the stairs and out of sight. Whoever the man was, the astrologer was sure of this: he was no Macedonian. If that was so, it stood to reason that his name wasn’t Philip, either.

  Plus, Thrasyllus couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew the man somehow. When their eyes had met, something about him had seemed familiar.

  Apion, the man who Didymus had chosen over him to assume the position of chief librarian when he retired, had been in the middle of lecturing him on moral responsibility when they were interrupted with news of the coming of this messenger who insisted on seeing Didymus. Thrasyllus was sure that Apion knew the man was lying—whatever else he was, Apion was no fool—but he also clearly saw no harm in bringing him into the presence of the chief librarian.

  Thrasyllus turned to look down at the pool behind him. The waters were a constant ripple from where they tumbled down the steps from the reflecting pool in the entryway. With his finger, he pushed into the cool surface and made a slow circle that cast little ripples of its own. They were quickly rolled over and disappeared.

  That was a difference between them, Thrasyllus thought to himself. Apion trusted, where he suspected.

  Looking up, he saw Apion hurrying back down the stairs, alone now. His face was pale, and it appeared he might be sick. Clearly, after Didymus had announced his decision—and after Thrasyllus had made a show of storming out—Apion had celebrated his appointment through the night. He was paying for it now.

  Even sick as he was, though, the other scholar managed to stare daggers as he scurried by on his way to relieve himself in the back rooms.

  Thrasyllus wanted to sneer back, but he couldn’t manage it. That kind of anger required pride, and he felt like the last of it had been beaten out of him today. Sitting here bruised and penniless, prepared to beg for a position—any position—at the Great Library, he knew he had nothing left.

  So instead he turned his gaze back toward his finger swirling in the water and watched the current erase the signs of his passing, wave by tiny wave.

  Spurred by a sudden anger, he pulled his finger out of the water and shook it dry.

  No, he told himself. He would not just roll over for Apion. When the scholar came back he would settle for nothing less than the third in line at the Library. And he would demand several coins in advance, to hire new rooms and make a fresh start. He would not leave the Great Library with nothing.

  As if spurred by a sudden shout, Thrasyllus abruptly smiled—painful though it was to do so. He reached into his pocket and pulled free his father’s coin. Then he held it up to the light, examining its worn edges, its rough surfaces. Not nothing, he thought. He still had this. It was battered by what it had been through, and it was still smeared with dust, but with work it would gleam once again. And it was still worth something.

  Just like him.

  Beyond the coin in his hand he could see the top of the stairs, where Didymus kept his office. He remembered how years earlier, when the city had fallen to Octavian, he’d stood up there himself. He was a much younger man then, but already he’d spent most of his lifetime here in this place. So many of the librarians had fled when the Romans advanced, for they were certain that the legionnaires would finish the work of Caesar and put the Great Library to the torch. Didymus had told them all to go, but a few of the librarians had stayed with him, barricading the doors as best they could, and vowing to stay with their books to the final end. Apion had left, but Thrasyllus had been among those who stayed. He had nowhere else to go.

  He remembered running from room to room, window to window, shouting back the news of what he could see of the Roman forces who were forming up on the Museum grounds. He remembered how he looked out one of those windows, just when they thought all hope was lost, and had seen a dark-skinned man and a little girl approaching the doors alone. Didymus had been sitting down here by the pool—near to this very spot, in fact—when Thrasyllus had shouted it down to him. He never understood the look of shock and unreadable awareness on the chief librarian’s face when he heard that Juba of Numidia and the lady Cleopatra Selene were coming.

  Back in the present moment, Thrasyllus blinked.

  Lady Selene.

  That was where he’d seen this Philip from Macedonia before: with the royal family. It wasn’t often that he’d gone to the palaces on Lochias, but on occasion Didymus had sent for a book to further his teachings to the royal children. And Thrasyllus was certain he’d seen the man there.

  He couldn’t possibly be who he said he was.

  Thrasyllus pulled the coin into his fist. Then, looking around him to ensure that Apion wasn’t watching, he stood and hurried up the stairs.

  Didymus worked day and night, but he wasn’t truly indefatigable. Eventually exhaustion would overtake him and he would fall asleep, facedown amid the papers on his desk. As his assistant for so many years, Thrasyllus knew which boards in the hall would creak. So as soon as he left the stairs he knew exactly where to step so that his movements made no more sound than the steady hum of noise from the rest of the building. It took him little time at all to make it to the librarian’s office, and to silently place his ear to the door.

  “I do not think he wants to ever kill again,” Didymus was saying. “But if he was freely offered the Ark, if he had the chance to use it, just once, to gain his revenge, his thirst for revenge against Caesar remains unquenched.”

  Revenge against Caesar? The astrologer’s mind raced as he closed his eyes to focus in on their words. Who were they talking about? And what ark?

  “So long as he’s no threat to us,” said the man who called himself Philip. Thrasyllus heard the sound of a chair settling under a man’s weight. “He can kill as many Caesars as he wants. He just can’t do it with the Ark.”

  This wasn’t just any ark. This was the Ark. Thrasyllus racked his mind, certain that he’d heard of such a thing before.

  “I do believe you are safe from Juba, my
friend,” Didymus continued. “But he isn’t the only threat. You’re still a wanted man here, Lucius Vorenus. I’m glad you’re here, but it isn’t safe.”

  In a flash, the astrologer’s contemplations about what the Ark might be disappeared, replaced with the clear memory of exactly who Philip of Macedonia really was: Lucius Vorenus, the former head of the palace guards, who’d been condemned to death by the conquering Caesar when the city fell, but who’d somehow survived his intended execution. His name had been on the lips of the city for weeks while an enraged Octavian sent his soldiers chasing every whisper of a rumor of the man’s whereabouts.

  “I know it only too well. Caesar is not a man to forget,” Vorenus replied.

  No, he is not, Thrasyllus thought to himself. And then, as if reading his mind, Didymus said, “Indeed so. He would pay a great deal for your head.”

  Leaning against the door, Thrasyllus couldn’t help but smile at his good fortune. Here, here in the Great Library itself, was a man that Caesar would pay riches for. Here was an opportunity for Thrasyllus to prove his worth. An opportunity far greater than any he’d had before. He’d read the sign of the gnomon of Eratosthenes rightly, by the gods. After all he’d been through, he was meant to come back here and see this man. He was meant to be the one to find Lucius Vorenus and turn him over to Caesar in return for a reward that was beyond anything he could ever receive as a mere librarian.

  All he needed to do was to find the nearest Roman soldiers. There would be some not far away, he was certain. There was always a company near the main square.

  Thrasyllus pulled his ear away, looking to the ground to measure his retreat to the stairs, but then he froze, thinking.

  What if he learned more? Surely more information would mean more appreciation, would it not? And the two men were still talking. And what if Didymus was equally a traitor to Rome? Would Caesar take him, too?

  The thought frightened the astrologer, but then he remembered the way the older man had looked at him with such disappointment when he told him that he’d chosen Apion instead.

  Besides, he reassured himself, Caesar would surely not kill the old scholar. He’d just remove him from his office and replace him with a new chief librarian. Not someone with questionable loyalty, like Apion, but someone who had proved his worth.

  Thrasyllus, smiling, could think of only one suitable candidate. So he leaned his ear once more to the wood.

  “You need something,” Didymus was saying. “Otherwise there’d be no reason to risk a journey so deep into the city. So. What is it, Lucius Vorenus? What brings you to Alexandria?”

  “It’s about the Ark of the Covenant, Didymus. It’s about the Shards.”

  The Ark of the Covenant? Yes, that was it. Didymus had once had him spend several months trying to determine a date when the Israelites fled Egypt—the Exodus, the Jews called it—and he’d had to read Greek translations of parts of their sacred book to do so. It spoke of a great Israelite leader named Moses, of the powers given to him by their god. And it spoke of how that god had given him a special object, a sacred vessel of extraordinary power: the Ark of the Covenant. Didymus had never said why he was interested in dating the event, but it was clear enough now that it was because of the Ark. It had been found.

  “It is safe?” Didymus asked.

  “For now. It’s on the Nile.”

  There was the sound of moving cloth from inside the room. “No, do not tell me where, Vorenus. I do not need to know.”

  “But where it is, Didymus, might be the problem.”

  “How so?”

  “Because it is not as powerful as it was here in Alexandria. So he says.”

  “He’s tried to use it again?”

  “He does not wish to do so. He does not think that a man should wield such power, he says.”

  “Always was a good man,” Didymus said. “The best of what a man could be. He is well?”

  “So he is.” Vorenus laughed. “And he’s in love, if you can believe that.”

  Didymus laughed, too. “I can, indeed. That beautiful Jewish girl, is it? Hannah. Yes, even someone so inexperienced as I am could see the look in his eyes when he looked at her. And she at him. Strange how love can be.”

  “So it is, I suppose,” Vorenus said. “I’ve only loved once. And that was lost a long time ago.”

  “I know it only too well, my friend,” Didymus said. “We cannot choose the ways of the heart.”

  There was a pause, and Thrasyllus imagined the two men smiling sadly at one another as they shared a memory he did not understand. Instead, he was reeling with thoughts. Lucius Vorenus was living somewhere on the Nile, and he had the Ark of the Covenant. The reward Thrasyllus would get from Caesar was going up by the minute.

  “So he wants to know what more I’ve learned about it?” Didymus finally asked. “He wants to know why it isn’t as powerful now?”

  “He instructed me to ask exactly that,” Lucius Vorenus said. “He doesn’t want it for the power, you understand. But if he needs to use it to keep it safe, he wants to know how.”

  “I understand. And you’re right about what you said earlier, my friend.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it does indeed have to do with where it is.”

  * * *

  Standing outside the Great Library, Thrasyllus made his decision. It was, he suspected, one of the most important he would make in his life.

  There was a small squad of legionnaires marching across the grounds of the Museum. In seconds he could run to them, tell them that Lucius Vorenus, at this very moment, sat with Didymus in the Great Library. There would surely be a struggle, but they would take him. Didymus would be removed. Apion would be discredited. And whatever reward there was, it would be his.

  Perhaps the Great Library would be his, too, if his luck held.

  But he didn’t run to them. Instead, he walked in the opposite direction, back toward the empty room that had once been his quarters here in the city, back toward the gnomon of Eratosthenes that had, on this very morning, been the sign that sent him back to the Library.

  He wouldn’t hand Vorenus over to Rome. Not yet, anyway. He and Didymus could talk on about their old memories and lost friends, unsuspecting that they’d been discovered. They’d been doing so for at least ten minutes when Thrasyllus had finally decided that he’d learned all he could and slipped away before he might be caught.

  And how much he had learned! Didymus hadn’t wanted to be told where the Ark was, but Vorenus, that old fool, had told him anyway: Elephantine Island, on the Nile.

  Elephantine! Leaving the Museum grounds and crossing the Sema Avenue, headed east toward the Old Quarter, Thrasyllus felt like laughing. After they’d beaten him this morning, the pimp and his brute had dumped him in the square, at the base of the sundial that Eratosthenes had used to measure the circumference of the Earth. Thrasyllus had seen in it a sign that he should return to the Great Library. Returning to the Great Library, he’d discovered Vorenus. And now, having discovered Vorenus, he knew that the greatest artifact of the Jews was on Elephantine—the very island that had the well that Eratosthenes had used to complete his calculations.

  The plans of the gods were unexpected at times, but he was confident that they had one. To know it, you just had to read the signs. He’d told that truth to Didymus more times than he could remember over the years, but the old scholar would hear nothing of it. Didymus didn’t believe in signs. Thrasyllus wasn’t sure if he believed in the gods. Even in announcing Apion as his second librarian, Didymus had made sure to belittle the astrology over which Thrasyllus often labored.

  But the gods had their plans. Thrasyllus had no doubt.

  And he had a plan, too.

  Lucius Vorenus had told Didymus that he’d come to Alexandria by barge. He would no doubt return the same way. And somewhere on that quiet canal, out of sight of anyone else, Thrasyllus would capture him. Then they’d go to Elephantine, and with the information from Vorenus he w
ould capture the Ark. It was, from what Vorenus had said, guarded by little more than some boy and the Jewish girl he loved.

  When he had the Ark, he would turn Vorenus over to the Romans. He’d take his reward. And then he’d bring the Ark—his Ark—back to Alexandria and learn to use it. Because that was the other thing he’d learned today: Didymus told Vorenus how he’d discovered that the Ark, and the other objects like it—Didymus mentioned that Juba of Numidia had one—were more powerful in certain places. They could draw more power, he said, from sacred spaces. The heart of Alexandria had been one. Another, he said, was Carthage. So Thrasyllus would bring it to Alexandria. He would study it. He would learn to wield its power. And then he’d have something far greater to give to the most powerful man in the world.

  What wealth would Caesar give him for that?

  His practiced steps brought him into the Old Quarter now. Rounding a corner, he saw ahead the little square with the sundial at its heart. The metal gnomon in its center struck upward toward the sky, toward the gods whose power might soon be within his reach.

  Thrasyllus had his sign. And he had his plan.

  He just needed to find Lapis, her pimp, and his brute.

  7

  TIBERIUS

  CANTABRIA, 26 BCE

  Selene and Juba had made love as dawn was breaking over Hispania. Then, with her husband snoring in peaceful serenity, Selene had gone to what passed for baths in this wretched encampment. It was hardly the comfort that she had known in Rome, living within Caesar’s household, and it was nothing at all like the finery of the baths she’d enjoyed in Alexandria, but bathing was like holding on to a memory. It helped her remember who she was.

  The praetorian who’d been assigned by Caesar to see to her safety among the men—a duty that the man clearly disdained, viewing it as akin to watching over a child in the middle of a war he’d much rather be fighting—had told her upon exiting the bath that her husband had left the encampment with the other Roman leaders and was not expected back for an hour or more. She’d thanked him, receiving a rough grunt of acknowledgment, and then decided to take an indirect route back to her tent.