by David Drake
But Varus knew the army wasn’t patrolling on the east bank of the Danube just to view nature. He didn’t think Corylus had much to worry about at night in Carce.
The Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest was straight ahead at the top of the staircase. Varus had never been here before—he hadn’t had any reason to be—but as he’d expected, the layout was the same as that of the temples nearer the town house where the family sacrificed on ordinary occasions.
An altar stood in front of the building. The temple itself was on a pedestal with steps—six of them—up from ground level in front. Six huge columns—Sulla had brought them as loot from Greece over a century ago—supported the great porch in front of the building proper. The full-height display doors were closed, but lamplight from inside gleamed from the edge of the pedestrian door set into the right-hand panel.
Candidus and the linkmen walked toward the building. Varus followed, supposing that Corylus had gone inside already.
A figure stepped out of the stand of cypress trees growing to the left of the temple; they’d shaded him from the moonlight. “Varus?” he called. “Is Master Pandareus with you?”
Varus turned to join his friend. “No,” he said, grimacing. “I hoped he’d come with you and Pulto. I should’ve sent servants home with him so that they could escort him now.”
“Pulto had other business,” Corylus said. He was holding a wrist-thick staff as long as he was tall. It was a countryman’s tool, not the sort of thing you saw in Carce; but Varus didn’t think anybody would laugh at Corylus, at least to his face. “I should have thought of that too. The poor old fellow probably doesn’t go out at night enough to realize how dangerous the city is.”
“The poor old fellow, as you describe him,” said Pandareus tartly as he joined them, “climbs to the Capitoline every clear night to observe the stars. Since I’m sober and keep an eye out for potential difficulties, I avoid problems.”
“Master, I apologize,” Corylus said, drawing himself up straight.
“It is my task to educate the young men who come to me,” Pandareus said calmly. “You’ve provided me with a teaching opportunity, Master Corylus, for which I should thank you.”
He smiled, though perhaps moonlight made the expression colder than he intended it to be. Corylus remained as stiff as a servant—or a soldier—being dressed down by a superior.
“It’s best we go in, since tonight we’re not here to observe the stars,” Pandareus said, this time with his normal fusty precision. “Master Varus? Just the three of us, I think, though there may be temple servants present.”
Varus turned to Candidus, who was standing fully ten feet away. I should have thought of threatening him with my sister before. Aloud he said, “Wait here in the compound. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
Corylus and the teacher were already walking toward the temple steps. Varus paused a moment longer and looked at the night sky.
All he had ever wanted to be was a poet and a scholar. He’d failed at poetry; he couldn’t pretend otherwise after the reading. Tearing his manuscript to pieces had been the right thing to do with it, even if he wasn’t aware of it when it happened.
Scholarship, learning about the world and organizing his knowledge, was all that remained to Varus. There too he was losing hope.
The constellations glittered in their familiar cold beauty, but now they danced a stately round in time with the rhythm in his blood.
WHEN HE REACHED THE TEMPLE PORCH, Corylus looked over his shoulder to make sure his friend was with them. Varus had always been a little absentminded, and after what had happened during the reading even somebody solid could be excused for dropping the baton.
Though Varus had fallen behind, he was coming up the steps now. He smiled wanly at Corylus. He didn’t look frightened, but there was something in his eyes that wasn’t right. Maybe it was just the moonlight.
The pedestrian door opened. A servant in a tunic of bleached wool with a yellow linen sash stepped out, holding a lantern high for them.
“Good evening, Master Pandareus,” he said, bowing to the teacher. “Lord Priscus is pleased to entertain you and your friends.”
“Thank you, Balaton,” Pandareus said, nodding as he entered. Corylus gestured Varus through before he followed, bringing up the rear. He’d felt uncomfortable having his friend behind him. Varus was perhaps the smartest person Corylus had ever met—even compared to Master Pandareus—but he just wasn’t the man you wanted bringing up the rear if you thought like a soldier.
Despite the size of the sculptured porch and the rows of tall columns supporting it, the temple building itself was more modest. Half a dozen three-wick oil lamps on wall struts lit the interior adequately.
Though this temple was built when Carce held unrivaled power in the world, the platform on which it stood was that of the predecessor standing when the Gauls sacked Carce three centuries earlier. The statue of Jupiter was old also; the torso was terra-cotta, and the head and limbs were carved from wood. The painted skin and staring eyes made the god look like a shepherd who had gone mad from solitude and too much sun.
Near the front of the hall was a round table with a dining couch. A bulky man rose from the couch with the help of an attendant. A half-full cup of engraved glass sat with the mixing bowl on the table. Two more attendants stood alertly at a side table with a wine jar, a water pitcher, and additional cups. They were watching the newcomers.
“It’s good to see you, Pandareus,” said the man who’d been reclining. “Though from the tone of your note, you aren’t here just to borrow a book from me, are you?”
“Indeed not, my friend,” Pandareus said. “Priscus, may I present Gaius Alphenus Varus and Publius Cispius Corylus. Youths, this is Senator Marcus Atilius Priscus, a commissioner for the sacred rites and perhaps the most learned man in Carce.”
“Possibly, old friend,” Priscus said. “Except for yourself, of course.”
He gestured to the side table. “Something to drink?” he said. “And you know that you and your friends were welcome to dine with me. The only blessing of my nights on duty here is that the temple cook is better than my own, and my own”—he gave his belly a jovial slap—“is extremely good, as you can see.”
“These youths are my only present students who show signs of ability,” Pandareus said, nodding toward them. Corylus and Varus stood stiffly, as though they were waiting to expound a literary passage. In a slightly warmer tone he added, “In fact they’re the most talented students I’ve had since I came to Carce, though neither will make his name as an orator.”
Priscus laughed. Looking from Corylus to Varus, he said, “Any associate of Pandareus of Athens can be expected to be a scholar and a gentleman. Boys, you’re welcome indeed. Now you—”
He focused on Varus; Corylus felt himself relax minusculely. Priscus acted as though he were a jolly gourmand, but even without Pandareus’s deference Corylus would have known that a keen mind directed the plump body.
“—would be Saxa’s boy, would you not?”
“Yes, your lordship,” Varus said; and said no more, just as he would have answered Pandareus in class.
“Your father collects facts the way a squirrel gathers nuts for the winter,” Priscus said. “No rhyme or reason to them. But he knows things that not another man in Carce knows, boy. Not even me and Pandareus here. But don’t you be like him, you hear?”
“No, your lordship,” said Varus, his eyes focused on the three bronze lightning bolts in Jupiter’s wooden hand.
“Come,” Priscus said to the teacher, “we can at least sit. Some of us are fat old men, you know.”
He gestured. “Seats for my guests, since they won’t dine with me,” he said. The servant who’d opened the door for them brought three folding stools—much like those which senators used, but with legs of walnut rather than ivory—from an alcove and set them around the table. Priscus sank back onto the couch—sitting rather than reclining, however—while the others seated
themselves.
Corylus stroked the walnut with his fingertips and felt a sensation of great age. The silken seat must have been replaced many times, but the wooden legs could be as old as the original temple on this site.
Pandareus waved off the wine that a servant started to pour. “This isn’t a social call, my friend,” he said, “though perhaps I’ll bring the youths another time and we can discuss Thucydides. We’re here on a matter of the Republic’s safety, and it may be the safety of the whole cosmos.”
Priscus sniffed. “The cosmos can take care of itself,” he said. “My duty is to the Republic. Go on.”
“Although Varus and Corylus are well read,” Pandareus said, “there are practical matters of which they may be ignorant. Would you explain to them why you’re here tonight?”
“A rhetoric teacher talking about practicalities?” Priscus said with a chuckle. “But I’m happy to oblige.”
He looked from Varus to Corylus. Corylus thought his friend sat even straighter than he did himself. The visions he’d seen yesterday—and the gods alone knew what Varus had seen!—had been disturbing, but what was happening now made him even more unsure.
All his life, Corylus had been steeped in the myth-shrouded history of Carce. That had been even more the case because he’d been raised on the frontier rather than in the civilized center of the empire. He felt in the core of his being that Carce was the village of bandits which by the favor of the immortal gods had risen into a city that dominated all the world which it didn’t outright rule.
Now he was at the ancient center of the city, discussing its mysteries with two of the empire’s most learned men. Corylus had never thought of himself as religious, but he shivered with awe.
“I’m one of the commissioners, as Pandareus told you,” Priscus said. “There are ten of us now, but there were only two when Tarquin created the college. You know that?”
Varus lifted his chin in agreement; Corylus said, “Yes sir,” as he’d been trained. A soldier who nodded in reply to a superior officer would be chewed out if the officer was a noble and knocked flat if he tried it with a centurion who’d come up through the ranks.
“We’re not priests of Jupiter,” Priscus went on, “but every night one of us dines and sleeps here in the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest. That’s because we’re responsible for the Sibylline Books, and they’re kept here.”
His silk-slippered foot tapped the floor, a mosaic of black, gray, and white chips. The design was geometric except for the four-by-five-foot rectangle in the center. There a monochrome portrait of Jupiter faced the god’s statue as though it were a miniature reflecting pool.
“They’re in a stone chest in the vault under this nave,” Priscus said. “The opening is under the cartouche of Jupiter.”
“Sir?” said Varus. “I knew that the Senate could order the commissioners for the sacred rites to examine the Sibylline Books. But that’s for the whole Senate, after a major threat to the Republic. You don’t have to wait by the Books in case a consul wants an instant response, do you? Unless the Emperor—”
“Not even the Emperor, my boy,” agreed Priscus. “The whole Senate, as you say. But one of us, a senator—”
“Very senior and respected senators at that, Master Varus,” Pandareus said with a nod of respectful approval toward his friend. “Vacancies are filled by vote, not lottery as they would be for judgeships.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may,” said Priscus. Despite his gruffness, he looked pleased. “Besides opening the books and examining them in a crisis, we commissioners are responsible for their safety. They’re never left under the control of slaves and freedmen alone, like the temple itself is.”
He looked beyond his visitors, toward—Corylus turned to follow his eyes—the servant who had admitted them. “Balaton?” he said. “Would you take a bribe from somebody who wanted to copy the Books?”
“I’m glad the responsibility is yours, Lord Priscus,” the servant said with a smile. “I know my own frailty.”
“Aye, so do I,” Priscus grumbled. “He’s as frail as that staff you came in with, boy. Cornelwood, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Corylus, surprised out of his nervous discomfort. “You know trees, then?”
“I know how heavy that staff must be from the way it swings,” Priscus said, “and I heard it when it rapped the floor. Cornelwood doesn’t break and it doesn’t give. I’d guess the man who carries it might be pretty much the same way.”
“Sir, I—,” Corylus said. He didn’t know what to say. “Sir, thank you. I’ll try to live up to the compliment.”
“Well, Balaton’s the same way, which is why I made sure he became chief of the commission’s attendants,” Priscus said. “I trust him a damned sight farther than I do some of my colleagues.”
“And it’s the Sibylline Books that bring us here tonight,” said Pandareus. “Because of what I saw yesterday, I believe that a serious crisis faces the Republic; a crisis far worse than plagues and foreign armies and even the internal dissensions that caused the common people to march out and found their own city on the Esquiline, separate from the better classes.”
“There’s been an omen, you mean?” said Priscus. “Go on, then. I hadn’t heard about it.”
“My student Varus was giving a reading of his epic at his father’s house,” Pandareus said. “Corylus and I were present. There were various manifestations of a disturbing nature during the reading.”
He turned toward Corylus and Varus on the stool beyond. “Tell the noble Priscus what you experienced, youths,” he said. “Master Corylus?”
Corylus licked his lips. “Your lordship,” he said, speaking directly to the commissioner, “I had a vision. I didn’t see Varus. After the first, I mean. I drifted off and imagined I was in a snowy forest. I saw Senator Saxa and a man I didn’t know. In the trees and snow, but really they were in the back garden of the house.”
“The man was Nemastes the Hyperborean,” Pandareus amplified in a dry voice. “He claims to be a wizard, and unfortunately I fear that he’s telling the truth.”
He leaned forward slightly to catch Varus’s eye. “Lord Varus, now you.”
Varus said nothing for a moment. Corylus squeezed his friend’s right knee. Varus started and his eyes opened wide. He gave Corylus a shy smile, then said to the commissioner, “Sir, I remember starting to read but nothing more. I thought I saw men on an island, but I must have been dreaming.”
He cleared his throat and looked down, then added, “Pandareus tells me I tore my manuscript up, but I don’t remember that. I’m not sorry, though. I’m not a poet.”
“Lord Varus, you had something in your hands after the reading,” Pandareus said. “I don’t believe it was a piece of your manuscript that I saw when your sister awakened you.”
Corylus saw his friend’s eyes open wide. His hands twitched together—only slightly, but toward the lump in the middle of his chest. It was barely visible beneath his toga.
“Sir, I don’t remember anything,” Varus said. The words might have been true, but they didn’t respond to the question. “Please, won’t you tell Lord Priscus what really happened, since Corylus and I can’t.”
Did Pandareus notice? Regardless, he nodded and said in his usual calm, precise fashion, “The room became dark. The walls vanished, but before that the designs painted on them seemed to come alive.”
He quirked a smile at his friend. “The tiny figure of Apollo on the panel behind Lord Varus began to play his lyre, I think in the Myxolydian mode. I regret that I wasn’t close enough to be sure, because I know music is a particular interest of yours.”
“Perhaps we can repeat the experience with the two of us closer to the wall,” Priscus said. He joked in an easy tone, but his expression was firm. “How long did the business last?”
“There was more,” said Pandareus with a slight smile. “The floor appeared to become a pit. Figures crawled up the sides toward us.”
“Figu
res?” Priscus repeated. “Not humans, then.”
The teacher shrugged. “I would be very surprised if they were human,” he said, “but they weren’t clear enough for me to be sure. Spirits, let us say. Demons, to use the Greek word.”
“Indeed,” Priscus said softly. “And is there more?”
“My sister slapped me,” Varus said, surprising Corylus and apparently the other men as well. “I didn’t know that, but I felt it—”
He managed another shy smile and touched his left cheek with his index finger. Corylus had noticed when they met tonight that there was still a little swelling.
“—when I woke up. The room was just like it was before I started reading. So that must have been the end. I was the cause.”
“I don’t imagine that Lord Varus was the cause,” Pandareus said before anyone else—including Varus—could speak further. “That he was the primary target of magic is likely enough. But the important point is that the omen was real and threatening. The sort of threat that requires that the Sibylline Books be consulted.”
Corylus let out his breath in a gasp; he hadn’t known that he was holding it. Varus closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with both hands, then looked around at his companions again.
“This occurred in Saxa’s dwelling,” Priscus said. His face gave no hint of what he might be thinking. “Will he support a request to the full Senate? Because you already know, my friend, that I won’t violate my oath.” His smile was wry. “Even if Balaton would permit me to.”
The servant stood against the east wall, motionless as a caryatid. His eyes were fixed on the light sconce across from him, and he didn’t appear to have heard what was being said.
Men like Balaton—men like Pulto—trusted very few leaders, but they would follow those few into death or worse. Corylus was quite sure that Balaton trusted Priscus … as he should, because Priscus would always do his duty.
“I’m quite sure that Saxa will not support such a request,” Pandareus said. “I fear that he has stepped into dangerous territory, under the sway of Nemastes the Hyperborean.”