The Gates of Hell

by Michael Livingston

  Truth be told, Juba knew that he had never fully abandoned his desire for vengeance upon Rome for what had been done to his family. Like Selene, he might have made his peace with Caesar, peace with Rome itself, but he had in so doing found a new face to hate, a new enemy that needed to be destroyed.

  They had to kill Tiberius. How else could Selene find comfort in the night, knowing that he had raped her and yet lived? And how else could Juba find comfort, knowing of her pain?

  The streets of Carthage were quiet as they passed between homes and buildings: Thrasyllus and Isidora walked ahead, Juba and Selene following, and the shadows only furthered the oppressive silence between them. Each of them, Juba supposed, was wrapped in private thoughts.

  He’d ordered the guards to stay behind with the ship, along with Lapis, the wife that Thrasyllus had insisted be brought with them. The captain in particular had been deeply concerned about the king and queen journeying through the city on foot in the night, but orders were orders, and he obeyed, leaving the four of them to make the trek up to the summit at the center of the city alone.

  Juba had been a little surprised when Thrasyllus had told them how Carthage was among those sacred places where the full powers of the Shards might be better accessed. At first, Juba had thought of sacred places as being only the ancient temples in Rome and Greece, or the distant holy city of Jerusalem. Yet the more he’d thought of it, the more he’d come to recognize that this was only a reflection of his own experience, the bias of his Roman upbringing and what he’d learned about the truth of the one God. If sacredness wasn’t about the gods themselves—and how could it be, if none of them was real?—then it was about the belief of the people in their gods. And for that, Carthage was a sacred place indeed.

  Juba knew his history, after all. He knew how Carthage had fought Rome over the centuries, vying for supremacy of the Mediterranean Sea. He knew the brilliance of Hannibal, who’d driven a Carthaginian army from the Iberian peninsula across the Pyrenees, across the Alps, to bring them down upon Rome. He knew how even today the cry of “Hannibal at the gates” meant a message of disaster to a Roman.

  He knew, too, how because of all this Cato the Elder had stood up before the Roman Senate and declared that ultimate victory over their enemy across the sea had to be achieved at all costs, that Carthage had to be utterly destroyed. “Carthago delenda est,” he’d said. Carthage must be erased.

  And so they tried.

  It never was, though. Sacked, yes. Left in waves of devastation and disrepair when the Romans finally seized the city and sold its inhabitants into slavery 120 years earlier, but hardly erased.

  It was simply too grand a place. Built on a natural peninsula, it was easily defended from land, and formidable seawalls held back incursion from the water. It commanded fertile lands. And its seaport was one of the most magnificent structures Juba had ever laid eyes upon: there was a long and deep rectangular harbor that extended away from the sea, the daily docking point for hundreds of ships from lands far and wide, and at its head a short canal led to a second harbor, round this time, and filled with the naval might of the city.

  He’d first seen that harbor as a child, after the death of his father, when he was being transported to Rome in chains, to stand in his father’s stead through the triumph of Julius Caesar. He was too young to remember it in anything but hazy flashes, impressions of its bewildering size. When he’d come back as a young man, this time leaving for Rome as an adopted member of Caesar’s family, secretly carrying with him the Trident of Poseidon, he had half-expected Carthage and its seaport to be less impressive, that its immensity would be so much the lesser because he was no longer a small child seeing it through a child’s shocked, naive eyes.

  Instead, he was impressed all the more. Year by year the seaport drew more wealth to the ancient city. It grew grander with each passing season. And around it, in the century and more since they had razed parts of the city, the Romans had built a new and prosperous city from its ruins. The old city had been laid out in concentric rings that emanated from the heights of Byrsa Hill at its center: there stood the fortified walls of the royal citadel and the great temples dedicated to Ba’al Hammon and Tanit, the supreme couple in a pantheon of elder gods. The new city, in Roman fashion, was laid out on a grid, and the once sacred places atop the hill were shunned now, tainted by the memories of what had been done there.

  Everyone knew that the Carthaginians had practiced child sacrifice. Ba’al Hammon had been an especially hungry god, and no one knew how many children had been fed screaming to his flames. The sacrifices had assured fertile lands and abundant crops, calm seas and full nets. They had assured good water and fine weather. They had assured success at war, the blessings of Ba’al, something greater than the innocent lives that fed him and kept him strong.

  At least for a time.

  Such was the way of faith, Juba had long since decided. No god was forever kind to his people, for no god was greater than chance and the inevitability of change in the world. All there was, in the end, were the men and the gods they made to favor or curse themselves, depending on the winds of fate.

  That, and the belief that the people left behind.

  And in that case, what place could be more sanctified, more full of belief, than the temple of Ba’al Hammon, where so many faithful had taken their children, their beloved offspring, and had given them over in sacrifice to the hungry gods?

  “Is that it?” Isidora whispered.

  The young girl and Thrasyllus had stopped walking where the buildings on either side of them, arched in a line across the slope, came to an end. As he and Selene caught up with them, Juba saw that ahead there was a darkness of ruinous stones and shattered pillars strewn among trees and brush: the despairing summit of Byrsa Hill, the center of the old city destroyed by Rome, the once-beating heart of a faith whose victims were still said to haunt it day and night.

  For a moment Juba felt new fears infect his resolve. But when he looked at Selene he saw that there was hope written on her face, a hope of peace beyond the pain. A hope for vengeance for all that she had suffered. Seeing it, he remembered why he had come here. For her. He would do anything for her.

  “It is,” he said. Then he strode forward. And as he pushed his way onto a path occluded by overgrown brambles, he felt the darkness open around him and welcome him inside.

  * * *

  The temple of Ba’al Hammon was, like so much of what they had passed on the summit of Byrsa Hill, a broken place. Its gates had long since been ripped away. The walls encompassing the open-air temple had been torn down. The pillars that once stood in rows leading to the altar had been toppled and smashed. Weeds made lines of green along the cracks in the dirt-strewn floor, and ropes of vines and brush made black webs between the pitted stone of statues beaten by chisel and storm into twisted lumps unrecognizable as men or gods.

  There had once been a great bronze statue of Ba’al Hammon at the head of the sanctuary, seated on his throne, flanked by sphinxes, the curling ram’s horns atop his head just visible beneath his tall crown. The god’s arms had stretched out before him, palms up as if ready to receive a gift, and his bearded face had stared out over the assembled believers, impassive and unrelenting to the pleas of the mothers and the fathers—and the wailing infants who were placed upon those hands to sate his hunger and appease his need for tribute. The arms and hands were raised slightly upward, sloped so that as the child struggled it slid, inexorably, down the hot metal and into the yawning pit of fire at the god’s feet.

  The statue had long since been torn down, melted in the forges of Romans who brought to Carthage a new set of gods to feed.

  But the pit below was still there, black and dark. As he and the others had lit torches around the desolate place of worship, Juba had not dared to bring a light toward that gaping maw of death. He had no desire to see what might remain in its depths. No one else had looked either.

  Juba stood now at the center of the circle of
flickering light in the sanctuary. The four Shards in their possession had been carefully laid on the ground before his feet. Thrasyllus had read many books on their voyage from Caesarea, and he seemed to know much of the knowledge of the Shards that Didymus had entrusted to him, but in the end he could tell them very little about what to expect beyond the assumption that the objects should be more powerful in this place.

  The young scholar stood with Selene and Isidora near the edge of the lit torches. By common assent, they had all agreed that Juba would be the one to test his Trident first. He had experienced more of the power of the Shards than anyone.

  First, however, he reached down and picked up the Aegis of Zeus. He and Selene had both experienced the ways in which it had extended their endurance and strength, and Juba was certain that if the Trident was truly so much more powerful here, he would need the help of the Aegis to control and survive it.

  It worried him to put it on, because he remembered so little of the last time he had worn it, in Alexandria when he had tried to seize the Ark from Selene’s brother, Caesarion. He’d been wounded badly in the struggle with those trying to keep it from him, and the Aegis, he was certain, had been what had saved his life—just as it had saved the life of Alexander the Great from his own hideous wounds. The Aegis had kept him strong.

  But it had done more, too. The Aegis had kept him angry. It had kept him enraged. It had blinded him to suffering; it had fed an all-consuming intent to fulfill his desire to take control of the Ark, no matter who or what stood in his way.

  And yet Selene had worn it without such effects. He had talked with her about it many times since they had made the decision to bring the Shards to Carthage, though he had never admitted to her that he was sure he had killed Caesarion in his Aegis-fueled rage. She said that she had felt no anger forcing itself upon her when she wore the armor. Instead, she felt a powerful capability of strength and insights about how to use the Palladium to achieve her needs.

  The Aegis enhanced life, they decided, and at the same time it amplified the emotions of the wearer. Juba’s anger had turned to white-hot rage. Selene’s fear had turned to a piercing recognition about how to save his life. The Shard gave them each what they needed.

  I need it to keep me strong, Juba thought as he pulled the armor over his head and onto his body. He began to pull its straps tight around his torso. For Selene, he needed it to help him find a way to kill.

  He felt it at once. The Shard that settled against his chest was warm, and it calmed his nerves. He’d felt the same thing in Alexandria, but there was something more this time: a whisper at the edge of his mind, like a voice in the distant dark that only he could hear.

  He turned to Selene to say something of it, and he was shocked at his sudden awareness of her heartbeat, her breathing. He was aware, too, of the looming shadows behind her, a wall of darkness like a wave that was poised to topple over them.

  “Are you well, my love?” Fear and worry were written across Selene’s face, and Juba could feel the pulse of her anxiety.

  Juba nodded and tried to smile. “I am. But there is more power here. I can feel it.”

  He turned back to the Shards before him, and he took a long, deep breath, clearing his mind. Then he lifted the Trident and focused his thoughts. His hand reached out and wrapped around the Shard itself, just as he’d done in Cantabria.

  The power surged, far beyond anything he’d felt before. It sparked through the tightening fingers of his grip. It danced along his skin, reaching up to consume him, to flow over him and pull him down into that black emptiness of the Shard. Clouds were forming overhead. He did not need to look to see. He could feel them there, gathering, pulsing like a heartbeat in the heavens. A wind was swirling into the sanctuary, and Juba felt even the ground beneath his feet tremble in witness of what he held in his grasp.

  He staggered a step, felt his arm rattle as he strained against the tide, but then he felt the power of the Aegis pushing back, bracing him against the onrushing tide until he had finally controlled it, calmed it, and held it still.

  But gods, it was strong. So very strong. It was as if what he’d felt in Vellica, the stroke of power with which he’d killed all those people, had been only a pool, and now he saw that beyond it lay the boundless sea.

  This, he thought. This was truly the power of God. The power to do His will, to build up, to destroy, to do His will to the uttermost end. The power around Juba swirled now in ready currents, like a lacing through the fabric of creation, and he could reach out and grip it.

  “Juba?”

  He heard Selene calling to him, but there was another voice now, too. It spoke from the darkness that surrounded them. It spoke in the wind, and its words were a language he did not know, whispered into his very bones.

  But he understood them all. He knew what the shadow wanted. And without thinking about it, he knew it was what he wanted, too.

  Because it was for Selene. It was all for her.

  In the gathering storm Juba reached out into that tower of midnight, that place where light was just a memory.

  He reached out into the shadow. Then he reached for another Shard.

  27

  LIFE FOR LIFE

  ELEPHANTINE, 25 BCE

  Caesarion had known he couldn’t swim the full width of the river. It was too far, the current too strong, even if by luck he wasn’t taken by a crocodile in mid-swim. Besides, there was nothing for him on the other side. Syene was in flames, and Hannah was here. Pullo and Vorenus were here. The Ark was here. While he still lived, he had to try to help them.

  It was a near miracle that he lived. He’d rung the bell until the attackers were coming through the trapdoor, and then he’d jumped from the tower, tumbling painfully onto the tiled ridge of the building below. As the men shouted behind him, he’d then run and leapt for the Nile.

  To his great relief, they’d not followed—whether because they couldn’t swim, because they thought him unlikely to last against the beasts of the river, or because they just had better things to do, Caesarion didn’t know.

  It only mattered that he was alive. There was still hope.

  He’d thought about letting the current push him north, down the river, but the crocodiles were thicker there. And it would carry him away from the fighting, away from his friends. So instead he’d turned and begun to drive his body hard against the current, staying as close to shore as he could once he made a wide berth around the harbor, which was swarming with attackers.

  The screaming from the town was loud, the fires that sprang up glowed like eerie bubbles against the foggy night, and with each stroke of his legs and arms he was certain that toothy jaws would snap them away in the black water, but there was no choice.

  He swam on.

  His lungs burned from the struggle, his heart quaked. But then, just as fear and exhaustion threatened to take the courage from him, Caesarion saw it: a black doorway in the rock of the shoreline. A chance. Hope.

  Caesarion swam for it, moving faster now as he angled across the current toward the shore, as he made one last thrust of energy, frightened that it would be in this last moment that he’d be taken to the black depths by the reptilian monsters that haunted the fishermen of the Nile.

  Nothing came for him. He reached the doorway and splashed out of the water onto stone steps in a rock-hewn corridor so midnight black he couldn’t see his hand before his face.

  It was the Nilometer. Grasping for the wall to lean against it and catch his breath Caesarion felt the chiseled signs upon it, the glyphs and letters marking the depths of the water against the stone.

  And that meant he was just across the walkway from the Temple of Satis. He’d only need to run a short way across those same paved stones he’d walked minutes earlier. Then through the Temple of Khnum, straight to the Ark and his friends—if they were still there, if they were still alive.

  Caesarion shook the despair away.

  Vorenus would fight. Pullo would fight. By the god
s, his beloved Hannah would fight.

  They were alive. They’d make it. He just had to get to them.

  He pulled himself up, his breath slowing down enough for him to begin to carefully climb the stairs in the pitch darkness.

  To his relief and terror, it did not stay dark for long. He wasn’t five steps from the water when he heard shouts from above, and the gated end of the Nilometer was outlined in torchlight as attackers began to run past it.

  Caesarion threw himself against the wall, trying to make himself small on the chance that anyone turned to look in his direction, but none did.

  They passed by, but there remained glow enough to see the stairs now: temple buildings nearby were alight, and the screaming told the story of priests or servants still inside.

  He hurried up the remainder of the stairs and carefully unlatched the gate from the inside. He looked in both directions, saw no one. His luck, he decided, was changing.

  Not about to wait for more attackers to show up, Caesarion took a single deep breath and then burst from the gate, sprinting for the Temple of Khnum.

  He did not get far before the flash of fire, the ring of battle, and the cries of the dying made clear that the attackers had beat him there. He ran on, and on the paved walk and the stone walls before him he saw now the shadows of men traced by the flickering firelight like terrible, shape-shifting demons.

  He ran on, not knowing what else to do, but certain that he’d never make it through the temple alive.

  Ahead, melting out of the fog, he saw the scaffolding around the obelisks being built in front of the Khnum temple. And he saw a figure, a sword in his hand, pulling out of the clouded shadows beside them and moving in his direction.

  The man had dark skin, darker even than a native Egyptian’s. A Nubian, one of the men of Kush, Caesarion realized. From farther up the Nile to the south.

  Caesarion’s run hitched for a step, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. And if he could somehow get the man’s weapon, maybe …