The Legions of Fire

by David Drake

  “Will you please explain to my students how consultations of the Books are usually made, Marcus Priscus?” Pandareus asked. He softened the formality of the request with a grin: the two old men really were friends. Their closeness went beyond mere respect and similarity of interests.

  “Why me?” said Priscus. “You’re their teacher, and you know the procedure as well as I do, don’t you?”

  “Perhaps,” said Pandareus, “but you, most noble Senator, are a commissioner; whereas I am a foreigner, albeit a clever one.”

  It may be that the world is about to end, thought Corylus. These men fear it is, at any rate. But they’re quibbling over minutiae because they both love the details; and because nothing is going to make either of them show his fear by the way he acts.

  “It’s simple enough, boys,” Priscus said. “There are three books of prophecies, each made from sixty-one palm leaves—written on one side only. When the Commission is called to examine the Books, we open them a page at a time and drop a ball from a tumbler just like the ones they use in picking trial jurors from the general panel. There are one hundred eighty-two white balls and one black one. When the black ball drops, we have the page. Then”—he shrugged—“we draw lots again, the ten of us or however many arrived for the meeting. The one chosen points to a section of the page while blindfolded. We read that section aloud and decide what action the Republic must take in response.”

  Priscus looked at the three of them in turn. Corylus felt the weight of his glance: the commissioner was no longer a fat old man and something of a buffoon.

  “I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be applying to the Senate for a formal opening of the Books,” he said, “on the basis of Gaius Varus here reading a passage through a closed stone box. That’s a greater prodigy than any calf speaking in the Forum, I think. And I witnessed it myself, so bugger what Saxa says—not meaning to be offensive about your father, boy.”

  “Sir?” said Corylus hesitantly.

  “Well, spit it out, boy,” Priscus said.

  Everyone was looking at him: his immediate companions and the servants watching avidly from above. “Sir,” Corylus said. “If you report to the Senate, they’ll know that you let us into the vault.”

  “Well, that’s what I did, isn’t it?” Priscus snapped. “I thought it was proper. If my colleagues disagree, they can order me executed for treason. But my oath is to the Republic, and I’ll report as is my duty even if that means being sewn in a leather sack and sunk in the Tiber. Do you doubt it?”

  Corylus stood straight. His arms were at his sides and his eyes were focused on a ring bolt attached to the wall directly opposite him for some unguessed reason. “Sir!” he said. “No sir, I do not doubt you.”

  “Army, is he, Teacher?” the commissioner said to his friend.

  “His father was, I believe,” Pandareus said mildly. “I need hardly say that he’s not what I expected from his background.”

  He coughed to clear his throat. “You may relax, Master Corylus,” he said. “Your observation shows a commendable concern for the well-being of Commissioner Priscus. He does not hold it against you.”

  “Bloody impertinence is what it was!” Priscus said, but then he looked at Corylus and grinned. “But you meant well, boy, and the fact that you realized that actions have consequences puts you ahead of most people. Puts you ahead of most of my senatorial colleagues, in fact.”

  He looked at Pandareus and said, “Are we done here, then? You’ve gotten what you came for, haven’t you? There’ll be a consultation of the Sibylline Books after all.”

  “We’re certainly done from my viewpoint,” Pandareus said, “but for my purposes there’s no need that the Books be opened formally. Master Varus has directed us to the threat; now we must deal with it.”

  Priscus had looked relaxed for a moment. Now his face became wary if not quite hostile. “Aye,” he said. “The Commission must deal with it, Teacher.”

  “The Commission will meet, will it not?” Pandareus said. Corylus and Varus stood still, pretending not to be present. The servants slipped back soundlessly so that they couldn’t see or be seen by the nobles in the vault, though they were certainly still listening. “You’ll consider the prophecy and carry out various divinations to determine the proper response to it.”

  “I suspect the procedure will be much as you describe, yes,” Priscus said deliberately. “But though the methods by which the Commission reaches its recommendations aren’t precisely a secret, neither are they matters which I will discuss with anyone who is not already a commissioner.”

  “Then we’ll pass on from that,” Pandareus agreed with a nod. “The recommendations themselves are matters of public record, however. In the past, the Commission has decreed sacrifices and public banquets, and occasionally it has summoned a foreign deity. I can imagine in this case that your colleagues might send a legation to the Brahmans of India and request that a company of them escort their fire god Agni to a new temple in Carce.”

  “Your description of past history is of course accurate,” Priscus said. His words were clipped and careful. “I won’t speculate as to what the Commission might recommend in this or any other case.”

  “Of course,” said Pandareus. “You will work in your fashion, my friend, and I will work in mine. I’ll tell you frankly that I hope your method succeeds. Indeed, I hope that the Republic and the world have as much time as it would take for a senatorial delegation to reach Barracucha on the Indus. I dearly hope that.”

  He thrust out his hand. After a delay of a heartbeat or perhaps two heartbeats, Priscus clasped it. The two old men hugged one another as fiercely as Corylus and Varus had done minutes earlier, then stepped apart.

  “Time to leave, then,” said Pandareus. “It must be close to midnight.”

  Priscus gestured him to the ladder. “Go on, and I’ll follow you,” he said. “Varus, you bring the lamp, and Corylus? I’ll want you ready to catch me if I fall, all right?”

  “Yes sir,” said the youths in unison. Corylus added, “But you won’t fall, sir. You’re not so decrepit as you pretend.”

  “Cheeky one, isn’t he, Teacher?” Priscus said as Pandareus carefully climbed toward the servants waiting to assist him. “And clever. They’re both clever, as I knew from the fact that you vouched for them.”

  “Master Pandareus?” Corylus said as Priscus mounted the ladder in turn. Pandareus tilted his head to look down.

  Corylus stiffened formally. “Now we know why you were sent to Carce,” he said. “If you hadn’t been, the prophecy wouldn’t have been heard in time.”

  If it is in time, he thought. May the gods grant that it is in time.

  “—EVEN-AS-THEY-DO-YOUR-ALL-POWERFUL-HUSBAND!” Alphena said, racing through the last phrase because her throat was hoarse. She didn’t want to choke and fail to complete the prayer after she’d gone to the effort of speaking the first part.

  She turned to her stepmother, seated again. “Do you have more wine?” she said harshly. That was the only way she could say anything with her throat so raw, but she was tired and angry and she hurt.

  Hedia walked over, exchanging the vellum sheet for a different skin of wine than the one they’d drunk from earlier in the evening. Alphena took it gingerly and worked out the wooden stopper. She wasn’t used to drinking from a skin, and she’d managed to squirt her tunic once already.

  “I’ve found that success in life requires less brilliance than most people think,” Hedia said. “And a great deal more persistence. Tonight is an example for persistence, I’m afraid.”

  Alphena squirted wine onto the back of her throat, then swallowed—and coughed. “This is unmixed!” she said, and immediately felt embarrassed. She knew she’d sounded accusatory, as though she were the kind of prude who would never drink unmixed wine.

  “Yes,” said Hedia with her usual cold smile, “and so is the third wineskin I had Agrippinus send along. I decided that if we had to stay the night through, we were go
ing to need something to warm us. As well as soothing your throat.”

  “Thank you, Stepmother,” Alphena said quietly. She took another mouthful, this time with greater care, and stoppered the mouthpiece. “I, ah, usually drink wine mixed. But this is good.”

  “By this time in the evening,” Hedia said, her smile broader and knowing, “the older heads will have left the dinner party, and those of us who remain will be drinking the vintage without water to thin it. I’ll take you with me in a year or two. After you’re properly married, of course.”

  Alphena felt her face twist into a grimace of disgust. I know the kind of party you mean!

  Hedia’s expression softened from the smirk of lust it had worn the moment before. “Here, dear, let me have some of that wine,” she said. She stepped close, but instead of taking the skin, she waited till Alphena handed it to her.

  She drank, watching the girl over the sack. The goatskin had been sheared and painted with a zigzag design that reminded Alphena of Moorish fabrics.

  When Hedia lowered it, she said, “I’m sorry, dear; I shouldn’t joke like that. Probably I’ve had too much to drink already.”

  Alphena turned her face away. She said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  Her cheeks were hot; with anger, she’d like to have said, but she knew that much of what she felt was embarrassment. I’m such a child! And she’s—she’s everything I’m not!

  “It matters quite a lot,” Hedia said. She set the wineskin on the floor, then put her hand on Alphena’s wrist. “Listen to me, dear. Don’t let anybody tell you how you must behave. Not your father, not me; and not your husband either, when you have one. You behave the way that’s right for you. However that is.”

  “I won’t have a choice when I’m married, will I?” Alphena said, hearing her voice rise. “And that’s what you want for me, isn’t it? A husband to take care of me and tell me how to behave?”

  “Look at me, girl,” Hedia said. She didn’t raise her voice, but it snapped like a drover’s whip. Alphena jerked her head around.

  “I’m proof that being married doesn’t turn you into a basin for your husband to wash his feet in,” Hedia said in the same harsh, demanding tone. “You father doesn’t treat me like a servant, and Calpurnius Latus didn’t either. Decide how you want to live your life and live it.”

  She unexpectedly hugged Alphena and stepped away. “Just remember,” she said, “that everything comes with a cost. Don’t cry to me if the cost of what you want is a high one.”

  In a still lower voice she added, “I hope for your sake that the price isn’t as high as what I pay.”

  Alphena shivered. The air was warm, but she had goose bumps on her arms for a moment. She held the prayer, but she wasn’t ready to resume the litany yet. She glanced at the stool.

  Hedia followed her eyes and said, “I should have had the servants bring another one, shouldn’t I? I said that we might have to spend the whole night here, but I suppose I didn’t really believe my own words.”

  “Hedia?” said Alphena, looking down at the floor of worn bricks in a herringbone pattern. Would her father be replacing this too? “What’s going to happen about Nemastes? About all of it?”

  Hedia’s face went hard, then softened. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I hope we’ll learn enough to avoid problems. Perhaps Nemastes will go back to Hyperborea or wherever he really comes from. From the Underworld, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Alphena looked up, surprised at the note of bitterness in the last phrase. The older woman ordinarily sounded cool and detached, even when her eyes said she was considering murder.

  Hedia laughed and gestured with her left hand, sweeping away the mood of a moment. “I’ve even thought of hiring a couple of your gladiator friends to deal with our wizard, dear,” she went on. “The trouble is, he seems to vanish into thin air except when he’s with your father, and I don’t want to risk an attack with Saxa present.”

  “Because he’d know it was you behind it?” Alphena said. Her lips were suddenly dry.

  “No,” said Hedia. “Because it wouldn’t be safe. Violence isn’t something you can control, not when it starts. I won’t chance Saxa having his head bashed in or taking a dagger through the ribs because of a mistake by some animal who can barely mumble his own name in Thracian.”

  She turned abruptly. “I need some wine,” she muttered. “Do you?”

  “I’ll drink some more,” Alphena said in a little voice. The night was pressing down on her. Not the darkness outside, but something much wider and much deeper than that.

  Hedia passed her the wineskin. Instead of removing the stopper immediately, Alphena said, “M-Mother? What if Nemastes attacks you? He knows you’re his enemy, surely? He wouldn’t even have to hire somebody.”

  “You think he might try to strangle me with his own hands?” Hedia said. She chuckled. “Well, dear, this would be one answer to the problem.”

  She lifted the front fold of her chiton and drew a finger-length dagger. Its sheath must have been sewn into her cloth-of-gold girdle, where it was completely concealed by the loose linen gathered over her bosom.

  She slipped the knife back and let the chiton hide it again. Giving Alphena a cold smile, she continued. “But since Nemastes appears to be a man, there may be a simpler way to make him less threatening.”

  “Ooh!” said Alphena. “You would with him?”

  She’d spoken before she took time to reflect; and besides, she didn’t feel like pretending to be sophisticated. It was pointless with this woman. And the thought of that bald creature putting his, well, hands, on her was disgusting.

  Alphena thought that the response might be a peal of laughter; instead Hedia gave her a lopsided grin. “You’re young, dear,” she said in a soft voice and a tone of what seemed to be affection. “If the gods are good to you, perhaps you’ll never have to learn more about the world than you already know. I hope that’s the case.”

  Alphena made a moue with her lips, then offered the wineskin to Hedia again. “Here,” she said. “I may as well say the prayer. Since we’re here anyway.”

  Hedia gave her the vellum, but she waved away the skin. “Just set the skin on the floor,” she said. “I’ll hold the lamp. This stand is too high for you.”

  She rose onto her toes to lift the lamp chain from the hook. Alphena’s body was turned toward the statue of Tellus, but she was looking back over her shoulder at her stepmother.

  A tremor shook the building. Dirt from the roof showered the interior. A body, either a cat or a large rat, fell from the rafters with a splop. Chittering, the creature scuttled into the shadows and vanished. Hedia kept hold of the lamp, but the bronze stand lost its balance and hit the floor with a clang.

  “We should get out before—,” Alphena started to say.

  “Alphena, daughter of Gaius Saxa!” a voice boomed.

  Alphena turned. The statue of Tellus was staring at her. Its painted lips moved as it said, “Joyous news, Alphena! You are fated to wed Spurius Cassius and to reign with him forever in the Underworld!”

  Alphena dropped the page of vellum she was holding. She felt as though she’d been caught in a winter storm and covered with ice.

  “No!” she cried.

  A second tremor struck. A crack zigzagged across the brick floor. Roof tiles rattled hard together, shaking down chips of broken terra-cotta. The statue of Tellus toppled toward Alphena like a ten-foot club.

  Hedia gave a shout and leaped at the frozen girl. The statue smashed itself into dust and splinters on the floor beside them.

  “Come on!” Hedia wheezed. The women scrambled toward the door, holding each other’s hands.

  Together they slid the bar from its staples and shoved the door open. Alphena glanced over her shoulder as she stumbled into the babbling servants. Oil which had spilled when the lamp smashed began to burn on the bricks. The flames gave off a hungry yellow light.

  CHAPTER VII

  You’re sure you wouldn’t like a lante
rn bearer?” Varus called to Corylus. His friend waved his free hand in response, then trotted eastward toward his home.

  “He’s a very sturdy young man,” said Pandareus gently. “I would judge that the staff in his hand would be more than a match for a footpad’s dagger.”

  Varus sighed. “Yes sir,” he said. “That’s just what I was thinking earlier this evening, when we met at the temple. But since what happened, I’m.…”

  He didn’t know how to conclude the sentence. He looked up the escarpment. The Temple of Jupiter was set too far back for him to see it at this angle, but the memories of what had happened there weren’t going to fade soon. Probably they would still be clear on his deathbed.

  He looked at his teacher and managed a smile. “Sir,” he said, “nothing seems certain anymore. I feel as though that cliff could slump down like the Tiber bank in a flood. Though”—Varus really grinned—“I think the Citadel will fail before Corylus does. I offered him an escort because I was afraid, not because I thought he needed one.”

  He cleared his throat. Two linkmen stood close with their lanterns, but Candidus was remaining at a discreet distance.

  “I hope, sir,” Varus said diffidently, “that you’ll permit me to send you home with attendants?”

  “I’ll certainly walk partway with you,” said Pandareus. “And then we’ll see, but I have to admit that I’m feeling less sure of myself than a good philosopher should be.”

  He looked at the moon, now at zenith, before lowering his eyes to Varus again. He continued. “I’ve been preparing for tonight’s events, you might say, during my whole life. But when it came—when I found myself in the midst of the wonder and the mystery that I’ve been seeking—I found it rather disconcerting. I find it disconcerting.”

  Varus smiled faintly. At least it’s not just me. Though it would be better for Carce and the world if I were being foolishly concerned.