by Kildare
“I have great faith you would rise to the challenge if needed.”
“I appreciate your flattery, but—”
“I do not flatter,” the man said. “I mean what I say.”
Uncertain how to respond, Cillian finally said, “Well, I hope you find your hero.”
The man’s eyes drifted back to the lake as the smile faded. “So do I.”
V
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11
Cillian stood on a balcony overlooking the same square where he had been brought before the Imperator in the glory of his own triumph. What was the name of the city? Siderea. That sounded right. The whole ceremony still seemed absurd, and for reasons he had yet to be told, other than he had supposedly done something to earn it. Had he wandered this dream world before only to have forgotten?
And why had the Imperator referred to him as a Tuath Dé? Did they think he was a demi-god? It was time to demand an explanation. These people couldn’t throw him a triumph and claim they didn’t know why.
On the far end of the square, at the bottom of the hill, marble columns supported a golden dome, shorter and wider in circumference than the senate. From this distance the dome appeared to be on fire, so bright was its reflection. Surely the effect had been some architect’s intention. Probably a temple devoted to a sun god, the dome a physical manifestation of the god’s presence in this world.
The square below was mostly vacant. The few stragglers looked like ants ambling about on a kitchen floor beneath the shadows of the surrounding counters. From his perch, he could make out the edge of the ice-blue dome of the senate. Beyond, the sun hung low in a pastel sky. That was west. Night was coming. From his memory of his walk with the Imperator through the senate and into the palatial garden, he figured he had to now be somewhere in the palace.
The balcony protruded in a semi-circle, the lip lush with green plants bearing bright flowers and sweet fragrance. A refreshing scent. The gentle purring of a motor hummed along the lip’s outer ledge. He bent over and was surprised to see a purple-throated hummingbird flitting about among the leaves. Such remarkable little creatures. They had always reminded him of the fables about fairies he had learned as a child. If what the archangels had told him was true, those childhood stories might not be fables after all. He had already seen two dragons, a dwarf, trolls, and the Tuath Dé. A bewildering thought.
As he bent over the ledge, a jolt of pain raced away from his shoulder. Memories of the flight through the mountains and the troll attack flooded back. The last thing he remembered was the burning of the hot iron cauterizing the wounds. Had they brought him here? He removed his shirt and was stunned to see the wounds still there. Why hadn’t they vanished? He tried to think if there was something he had missed. No. He had been shot with the arrows. Blacked out. Woke up when the soldiers were tending the wounds. Blacked out again. And now he was here. There was nothing in between.
“God’s grace returns you, Cillian,” a woman’s voice declared in Gaelic.
Cillian turned and saw Niamh walking toward him, her face beaming radiant light. She wore a lamb-white tunic. A sword hung from her hip. She stopped at his side, the smile persisting. “The Imperator will wish to speak to you right away. Please, follow me. I’ll lead you to him. He’ll be overjoyed you’re still alive.”
“Did he think I was dead?”
“We didn’t know. You were so badly wounded when you disappeared that we weren’t sure you’d survive.”
Niamh placed her fingertips on the wound. “It’s healing nicely. You’ll have a scar worth bragging about. Now come. We mustn’t make the Imperator wait.”
She turned and walked away. Cillian buttoned his shirt as he followed. Off the balcony was a bedchamber centered around a hot-tub-sized pool in a raised platform. Then a long hallway, murals coloring the brick walls. Once again he was being dragged about the city with such haste that he had no time to admire its wealth of artistry. As it was, he could barely keep pace with her brisk stride, and him with longer legs.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I saw you as I walked past. Your arrival is well-timed. Rumors have spread that you took the sword for yourself. That you betrayed lord and realm. I never believed it, though I was concerned you might’ve died.”
“What happened after I was struck by the arrow? I remember very little of our escape.”
“You were delirious after you were shot. You were mumbling nonsense, something about the god Loki. Kjartan had to hold you in the saddle. We were near the edge of the trees and within sight of the outpost when your horse collapsed, forcing us to stand our ground and fight back the trolls. The sentries saw our fight and ran to our assistance. If not for them, we would’ve been overwhelmed and killed. We repelled the attack with their help. You were carried away while we helped bear the wounded and killed from the battlefield. By the time we arrived at the outpost, you’d already vanished. Caused quite a stir among the men. They’d heard of you, but considered the tales to be only wild exaggeration.” She smiled, that damned smile with so much vague suggestion. “They’re believers now.
“Fearing another attack, we abandoned the fort and retreated to a stronger fortication. Unfortunately, our suspicions proved correct. The next day the trolls began a full-scale invasion, attacking all along the northern border at once. I returned to the capitol, while Kjartan and the others remained to fight. It hasn’t gone in our favor. The outposts have been overrun and our forces routed for hundreds of miles along the northern border.
“Reinforcements have been sent, but they won’t arrive for a week at the earliest. More legions from the south arrive in Siderea every day. The Imperator intends to lead them north himself. Messengers have also been sent to the lands of the Daoine Saora and Muir Mac Tír requesting assistance. I hope they give a favorable answer, though I worry. In the past the factions would’ve put aside their squabbles and joined together to press back the trolls. Now I fear too much blood has been spilled, the enmity too great, and silence will answer our pleas.”
“Was it the Imperator’s idea to send me in pursuit of Anbhás?”
“I believe so. Why do you ask?”
“I think someone else was behind my journey, for reasons that had nothing to do with the sword or a dragon.”
“Why do you think that? What happened?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t think you’d understand. Are there any in the Imperator’s court who might wish to harm him? Anyone you don’t trust?”
“Scorpio, the Imperator’s nephew. He wears a treacherous mask. He’s been acting strangely since you first appeared.”
“Have you informed the Imperator of your suspicions?”
“Not yet. My fears were only that at first, but now I’m certain. Scorpio means the Imperator no good. He’s a new senator. Not a man who can be easily removed from power. My suspicions alone may not convince the Imperator, so I must wait until Lucens returns. He too has had his suspicions.”
Who was Lucens? He had heard that name before, but couldn’t remember the details. Cillian considered asking her, but since she, like everyone else in this world, acted like he already knew the answer, he waited, hoping she might reveal it on her own. He had received enough strange looks for questions they thought he should already know. How to get answers without revealing his ignorance was the problem. The truth seemed a bad choice. They might consider him an imposter, or a spy. Either way, not likely to end well. There were many fates worse than ignorance.
They turned a corner and nearly collided with the same young attendant who had informed the Imperator the dragons were ready in the garden. That day already seemed like ages ago. How long had it really been? A few weeks, at least.
“Ave, Tuath Dé,” the young man said in Latin. “Good to see you still walk among the living.” He turned to Niamh. “The Imperator wishes to speak to you, Niamh.”
The young man was the second who had addressed him as Tuath Dé. Why did they think he was a demi-god?
An even stranger question now that Cillian had seen them. He looked nothing like them.
“We were just coming to see him,” Niamh answered in Latin.
“What’s your name?” Cillian asked, also using Latin.
“Caeso.”
“Will you do me a favor, Caeso?”
“Yes.”
Cillian unbuckled the scabbard’s belt and laid the sword across the young man’s hands. His face lit with awe.
“Will you stand outside while I tell the story of how I retrieved this sword, and when I call you, present it to the Imperator?”
The young man nodded wordlessly.
“A little theatrics for the tale,” Cillian explained to Niamh.
The attendant led them down another hallway to a dining room. At each of the four exits stood a guard for protection. Lit lamps hung on the walls, a long wooden table, empty chairs—except for the end where the Imperator sat—a young woman clearing the last of the dishes. The old man stared down at his clasped hands resting on the table. He failed to notice their entrance, too lost in his own thoughts.
“Imperator,” Niamh announced, “Cillian has returned.”
The old man looked up, a surprised smile spreading across his face when he saw Cillian. “God’s grace returns you,” the Imperator said in Gaelic, his arms extended to the sides in welcome. “We feared you’d been killed.”
Now the Imperator spoke Gaelic. The constant switch of languages was confusing. And why did the leader of a people that spoke Latin, himself speak Gaelic?
Cillian chose Gaelic to respond. “I’m not that easy to kill. Too stubborn, I suppose.”
“You’ve proven that many times. Niamh, I wish also to speak to you, but that can wait for the moment. Has he told you his story about the sword?”
“Not yet. He was waiting for you.”
“Excellent. Have a seat, both of you. Cillian, tell me all about how you retrieved Anbhás. You left Aduro quite confused when you failed to return. He thought perhaps something happened to you while in Sindri’s cave.”
Cillian sat down and began to tell the story from the moment the dragons landed near Sindri’s cave. He got no further than his entrance into the cave when a group of men burst into the room.
“Uncle, I must speak to you right away,” the apparent leader announced in Latin as he approached the Imperator.
His four followers stopped at the end of the table. All were armed. Something about the men’s appearances made Cillian uneasy. They seemed a little too rough, a little too shady. The leader was a tall, thin man in his late twenties, fair hair, shaved face, and dark eyes constantly shifting about and never seeming to settle long on anything. He wore a beige toga and seemed oddly nervous. The others looked little more civilized than wild animals, with scruffy beards and tangled, greasy hair. Wore mail armor over dirty and tattered clothes. They were shorter and stouter than their leader. Bit of a foreign look to them, at least compared to those Cillian had seen in the city.
“Scorpio, is it that important?” the Imperator asked in Latin. They were switching languages again. “Cillian was explaining how he stole Anbhás.”
For the first time, Scorpio noticed Cillian’s presence. He stopped in midstride, a flicker of panic sweeping over his face as he looked Cillian over. Just as quickly he relaxed. Odd behavior. Cillian looked down at himself, wondering if Scorpio had seen something to change his reaction. The sword. He was without a weapon. He looked across to Niamh, who watched Scorpio, her contempt for the man not entirely veiled.
“Uncle, I’m afraid his story must wait for now. Lucens and his men were ambushed a week ago by trolls near the fords of An Fia Bán. All but three of the men were killed. My lord, I’m sorry to report that your son was among the fallen. We rode here as soon as we heard.”
So Lucens was the Imperator’s son, and now he was dead, killed at some river called the White Deer. So much for Niamh’s plan to have him alert the Imperator of their suspicions about Scorpio.
Niamh’s hand covered her mouth, her face cast in shocked horror. The Imperator rose from his seat, gripping the edge of the table to steady the sway. He looked up, anger and sorrow fighting for the mastery of his face.
“What of his body?” the Imperator asked in a trembling whisper.
Scorpio lowered his gaze. “It’s being brought back to the capitol, my lord.”
“Have you told this to anyone else?”
“Not yet. I thought you should be the first to know.” Scorpio circled around behind the Imperator and placed his hand upon the old man’s shoulder. “This act will be avenged.” He turned his gaze toward Cillian, a flash of contempt. “An error was made in pulling so much of the northern defenses to fight in the South.”
A warning sounded in the back of Cillian’s mind. The whole scene was wrong. Scorpio was far too close to the Imperator. The other men were too alert, as if they were anticipating something. One man’s sword hand was poised for action, like a man about to draw down in a duel. Cillian glanced at Niamh, a look of alarm dawning. She saw it, too. Everything was happening too fast. Cillian and Niamh rose in unison, even as a shaft of lamp light flickered on the blade.
“Death awaits,” Scorpio whispered into the Imperator’s ear as he thrust the dagger into the old man’s ribs.
Shock, then pain, and an effort by the Imperator to steady himself as his strength seeped out. His hands slipped from the table and he slumped to the ground. Scorpio bent over and used the Imperator’s white robe to wipe the blood from the dagger, a crimson pool spreading across the tiled floor.
“Run, Cillian!” Niamh screamed. “Run!”
Three of the Imperator’s guards were already dead. The fourth was injured but still fighting. Cillian dashed past their combat out into the hallway in search of Caeso and his sword. The young man stood near the entrance, close enough to hear the fighting but too far away to see what was happening. Confusion marked his face.
“Scorpion murdered the Imperator,” Cillian said as he grabbed the sword, fumbling to pull it free of the sheath. “You must get out of here now.”
Caeso blinked dully, the realization slowly forming about what Cillian had just told him. Then the implication hit and he turned and fled.
The sword was free. Cillian turned back. Niamh ran toward him with two men chasing. She screamed for him to run, but he ignored her and ran back. They met, Niamh turning to face her pursuers, Anbhás already in motion, the blade cleaving clean through their armor. Both men were dead before they hit the floor. The bite was deep, cutting through the mail armor like a machete through a cattail stalk.
Niamh grabbed his arm. “We must go. I killed two of them, but there are more coming. Too many. We must get away from here.”
They turned and bolted, Niamh leading. The hallway ended at the garden. A path disappeared into the trees ahead. Yells of battle and cries of death rang all around. The young woman who had been clearing the dishes from the Imperator’s table ran past through an opening, chased by a man brandishing a sword.
A bridge leapt over a stream and on the other side the path forked and beyond rose a wall. Niamh followed the wall to the left. They shimmied up a beech tree with a thick branch that had been sawed off just short of the wall. Cillian led the way up. Below them a man charged with a drawn sword. He took a swipe at Niamh, but she was out of reach. He glared at them helplessly, unable to climb the tree with one hand, and with the other carry his sword.
Cillian tested the limb. It was as wide as a railroad beam and solid. No quiver at his step. He was halfway out, Niamh right behind, when an arrow cut between them. The archer stood thirty yards away, already nocking another arrow. A second archer was drawing an arrow from his quiver.
The limb was cut off four feet short of the wall. Most likely to prevent people from using it to scale the wall from the outside. Cillian heard an arrow release as he leapt. It whistled behind. He landed on the wall and dropped over the side, landing in a street. Hiss of another arrow and a thud. It had
hit something. He prayed it was the tree and not Niamh. Though he had developed a liking for the woman, it wasn’t a purely compassionate instinct. He needed the woman. Without her, he was a wanted man lost in a foreign city.
Another hiss and still no sign. At last she appeared, dropping down unharmed beside him. They were in a broad street bordered by the wall on one side and tall apartment-looking complexes across. Half a dozen people regarded them with looks of confusion and suspicion.
“Come,” Niamh urged. “We have to get out of Siderea as quickly as possible.”
They ran down the street. At the sight of two of their pursuers hopping down from the wall, they dipped into a narrow alley. Turned right, then left, right again, and soon Cillian was completely lost and unsure even of the direction they were heading as they raced down the narrow, twisting streets. Had they never heard of a grid?
The height of the buildings was even more surprising. He had known the ancients could construct tall buildings, but he hadn’t expected so many apartments of this size. Six, seven, even eight stories tall. The modern feel of the city was also unexpected, more like the slums of New Delhi or Cairo than his imaginings of ancient Rome or Athens.
Laundry was strung out between the buildings, homeless people squatted everywhere, and the streets often converged on fountains where the people gathered their water in clay vessels. The air was a shifting tapestry of notes—greasy smell of cooking meat, burning wood, incense, sweat, filth, and countless others, pleasant and nauseating all at once. Some streets were so packed they had to jostle to press through, others empty, some wide enough for two wagons to pass, others so narrow Cillian could touch the buildings to each side.
At the sight of soldiers running across the street ahead, Cillian and Niamh slipped into a deserted side street and stopped. One soldier saw them, pointed at them, and shouted something he couldn’t hear. A splash of liquid landed next to him, spraying his feet. The soldier screamed obscenities at someone above and out of sight. Someone had tossed piss out of a window. The soldier’s attention distracted, they escaped.