Queen of Kings

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  The Psylli had come to him before he left, and asked to go with him to Krimissa, but even after the battle at the Circus Maximus, he was no Roman soldier. Usem could not possibly be as well trained as Agrippa’s own men, and he did not seem likely to follow orders. Agrippa had left him, instead, guarding the silver room. If Chrysate tried to use magic, Usem would know it.

  At last, the temple was in view, and Agrippa’s smile faded.

  From below, the building shone in the late-afternoon sun, placed at the top of a spiraling cliff and nearly inaccessible by road. Agrippa looked up at it, nervous.

  It was what he wanted, though, he could not deny that. He’d prayed for a solution, and the historian had given it to him.

  Agrippa directed his company to wait for nightfall, and when it was fully dark, they rode hooded up the hillside, approaching the temple from the rear. The horses had to place their muffled hooves carefully, and a journey that under better conditions should have taken but a few minutes took well over an hour. The darkness was well used, however. Agrippa did not wish the temple’s inhabitants to have advance warning of the soldiers’ approach.

  He hoped to do things peacefully, but he did not expect this would be the case.

  The temple guarded a prize, or so Nicolaus swore. Weapons that would kill an immortal, that would fight against magic. They would be fatal to Cleopatra as well as to Chrysate. Chaos to fight chaos.

  Agrippa adjusted his armor and ran his hand over his shaven head, smoothing nonexistent hairs. The horses crept onward up the hillside path, and the warriors of Rome sat tall in their saddles, the shine of their armor covered by dark cloaks. This was by no means the worst thing they had done in service to their leader.

  Agrippa signaled, and his men dismounted to approach the gate. They ran their fingers across the stone wall, feeling for cracks in the mortar. One legionary began to climb, fitting his fingers into the stone.

  A hoof slipped on a rock, and a ringing note sounded in the silence. Agrippa froze, directing his men to draw their blades.

  After a few moments, a man opened the door slowly. This priest was not a problem, a crippled ancient with clouded blue eyes, but he was flanked by a younger companion, a dark-skinned man with a piercing gaze.

  “I am Marcus Agrippa, and these are my men,” Agrippa announced. “We travel on behalf of the emperor.” They did not, of course. The emperor was in no condition to know anything about this journey.

  “Greetings,” the younger priest said. “We’ve been watching you come up the hill since sunset. You do not travel as discreetly as you imagine.”

  Agrippa straightened his shoulders. He was not as skilled as he had once been, or these priests were privileged with unearthly information.

  “Your emperor calls on you,” Agrippa informed him. “He asks that you provide him a service.”

  “We are simple men,” the priest replied. “We can set you a table with what little food and drink we possess. You are welcome to bed here.”

  “It is not food and drink we require,” Agrippa said. “It is not sleep.”

  The man looked steadily at him, a half smile on his face.

  Agrippa began to wonder if he would need to kill him before entering the temple. He had no way of knowing how many were behind the walls, however. Such a killing might be less than advisable. He also had no idea of the whereabouts of the item he sought. It would be an unfortunate errand should all the priests become indisposed, leaving their treasure still hidden.

  “No,” the man said at last. “Warriors of Rome, I see that you call for more than a meal. I see that you call for the impossible. Is that not what your emperor does? He plays with fire, does he not?” The expression on the priest’s face was unreadable. Was he mocking the empire?

  Agrippa was uncertain, but at last the priest opened the gate of the temple and beckoned them in.

  “Welcome to our fire, then, meager though it be. Sheathe your swords. This is a sacred place, and there is no use for them here.”

  Agrippa glanced up reflexively as he passed through the gates, and saw the arrows nudging out of windows and cracks in the rock. Bows aimed at him and his men. It was good that he hadn’t acted in haste. They guarded their treasure. Agrippa felt oddly cheered.

  He noted the muscles rippling in the arms of even the stable boy. He assessed the elder priest who’d first opened the gate and decided that perhaps the man was not as decrepit as he had initially appeared. The priest’s walking stick seemed to conceal a blade, and the hunched posture he’d affected when opening the gate had evolved into a loose-limbed stride.

  Agrippa pretended that he neither saw nor minded the villains aiming at him. He signaled silently to his men, and they rode into the temple grounds quiet, calm, and in absolute peace. They would act when Agrippa directed them and no sooner. These men were seasoned warriors, and they trusted their commander.

  A marble statue of the warrior Philoctetes, grimacing in pain, the bow of Hercules in his hands, stretched over the entrance to the temple. The statue’s leg was wrapped in bandages, and his wounded foot was raised off the ground. There was an inscription, which stoked Agrippa’s heart into a secret, joyful fire.

  Here lies Philoctetes, Hero of Troy,

  and inheritor of the poisoned arrows of Hercules, envenomed with the poison of the conquered Hydra.

  Warrior, fall down and weep for the death of Chiron, the immortal, killed by these same arrows.

  Fall down and weep for Hercules, killed by this venom.

  Sing hymns to the bravery of Philoctetes, who suffered ten years, wounded by Hercules’ gift.

  Let these arrows never again be released from their bow,

  but guard them with your own mortal lives.

  Another statue was placed just inside the doorway, this one depicting the tremendous centaur Chiron, pierced in the leg with an arrow, his agonized face lifelike enough to startle the men as they passed by it in the near darkness. The centaur’s blue glass eyes dripped marble tears as he tried to pull the arrow from his body. Agrippa shuddered as he passed beside it, feeling the unpleasant cool of the statue brushing against his bare arm.

  The priests led the soldiers down a tight passageway and out into an inner courtyard where a table was already laid.

  Agrippa smiled. His adversaries were charming. They seated themselves and beckoned for the small group of soldiers to join them. They took the first bites of the food, knowing that the soldiers would suspect poison.

  Agrippa ate heartily. It was rare to be away from his commander. He found that he preferred it. Augustus had altered tremendously in the past months, and Agrippa mistrusted his friend’s instincts. The food here was simple but good, and it reminded him of better days. He sat back from the table when he had taken his fill.

  “You will give us what we came for,” he said, and moved his hand to signal his soldiers. He heard the sound of arrows being fitted, of bowstrings being drawn.

  He then heard the rushing noise of an arrow flying. It embedded itself in the table, directly before his plate. It had not been shot to kill but to warn.

  “Why should we surrender our holding to you?” the elder priest asked. His eyes were no longer clouded but bright.

  “And why should I not kill you?” Agrippa asked the priest, pulling a concealed dagger from its sheathe against his thigh and swiftly drawing it beneath the old man’s chin, not to cut his throat but to warn the other priests. Why did Agrippa’s men not move? What delayed their hands?

  A thin trickle of blood made its way down from the blade. A scratch.

  It was then that Agrippa felt his own throat begin to constrict.

  Outside the temple walls, three men in homespun cloaks watched the gate. The smallest of the three fit his gloved fingers into the spaces in the stone. He hauled himself carefully up the wall, his muscles wobbling with exertion.

  His companions, a younger man with ink-stained fingers and saddleweary thighs after three days’ hard riding from Rome, and a tal
l man, his dark skin nearly invisible in the shadows, hesitated for a moment and then, breathing deeply, followed the emperor into the temple.

  12

  Chrysate crouched on her haunches, nursing a flame and pinching a lump of beeswax in her fingers. Now that Augustus was finally gone, she was at liberty to cast the final portions of her love spell. Selene would relent. She’d already cast the rudiments, with the birds and flowers who sang for the child a nonstop melody, a trance-inducing chant, but Selene had managed to resist most of them. She would not resist this, and now that Chrysate had renewed herself, she was strong enough to perform it. She shuddered. It was exceedingly unpleasant that Augustus had seen her coming out of the cauldron, but she’d dealt with that well enough, throwing herself through the shadows and into his bedchamber, concealing herself there. The theriac had made the emperor uncertain. She’d merely emphasized it, and it had yielded a happy outcome. Augustus had left Rome shortly thereafter, no doubt because of his concern over his sanity.

  Already tonight, Chrysate had slipped into the silver room, past the guards. The Psylli had been the only true barrier. Had he been guarding the room, she might have had more trouble, but he’d departed with Augustus. Now she had the silver box containing Cleopatra. She felt more confident by the moment. Why had she been so afraid? All she needed was Selene. It would work. It had to. For a moment, only a moment, but it was enough, she’d been able to see Hecate in the scry, chained still but stronger than she had been.

  Chrysate sculpted the wax into the form of a young girl, her bosom and waist newly curving but her limbs still childlike. She entwined a long black hair into the figure’s flesh, twisting the strand about the figure’s wrists, and binding them behind the girl’s back. She sang as she did this, a wordless incantation in a voice by turns rough and silken.

  When the figure and spell were nearly complete, Chrysate pulled a golden pin from her braids and stabbed the doll through the heart. It opened its waxen mouth and gasped. It stretched out its waxen arms and writhed on the floor, pinned like a butterfly.

  “No love but mine,” Chrysate said in Greek, stroking the figure with her fingertips. “No heart but mine. No mother, no father, no husband, no lover.”

  She caressed the doll, and the figure arched like a cat under her touch.

  “None but I will have you,” Chrysate told the figure.

  The witch stabbed it through the heart once more, and the figure curled about the pin, clutching the metal to her breast. Chrysate smiled. Spells such as this one had many purposes, all of them sweet.

  Cleopatra’s daughter woke suddenly from dreams of flower-strewn fields. The flowers had been the color of smoke, and the grass like sharp reeds. She’d walked barefoot up a long cliffside path, her eyes on the dark entrance to a cave high above her. On her right, the ocean had crashed against the rock wall, splashing her feet with foam.

  The curtains blew in a breeze that came drifting, warm and scented with perfume. There was a pain in Selene’s heart, and she lifted her fingers to touch her chest. There was nothing to be felt on the skin, but deep inside her was a hot, searing feeling, as though her heart were being torn in two. The pain faded even as she touched it. A dream, then. Just a dream.

  She turned her head, hearing a sound. A chanting close by in Greek. “No heart but mine.” The whisper made her skin prickle.

  “None but I will have you.”

  Someone was in her chamber.

  She sat up in bed, but even as she did so, she knew she had been mistaken. Her eyes were fully open now, and she could see the corners of her room.

  She lay back, strangely uneasy, and gazed at the bouquet on her bedside table, the most glorious flowers she had ever seen. They had never wilted but seemed as fresh as the day she had received them, the first day she met the priestess.

  She’d been apprenticing with Chrysate now for weeks, chanting songs of Hecate in the priestess’s chambers, and all the time wondering where her parents were, what Chrysate had done with them. Her escape into Rome after the events at the Circus Maximus had not been successful. By the time the centurion had found her, she was hungry and scared and ready to return to the Palatine. She knew the priestess had captured her parents, knew that Augustus had tried to kill her mother, and yet she could not bring herself to sorrow. Selene, daughter of a queen who’d taken power not so much older than she was now, found herself wanting to turn back into a child. Chrysate daily took her hand, taught her new language, sat opposite her, peering into her face, smiling.

  The flowers turned back into birds as Selene looked at them, and the birds fluttered about her chamber, singing a sweet, lulling song.

  She could almost understand the words they sang. Almost.

  “It is time,” she heard. “Come.” Then it became a simple melody again, but she was already out of bed, making her way down the corridor in her nightgown. The birds accompanied her, a singing cloud rising toward the arched ceiling of the corridor, then swooping to the floor.

  She raised her hand to tap on Chrysate’s door and found it already open. There were candles lit, and she could smell the priestess’s perfume.

  Selene pulled aside the curtains of the priestess’s bed and saw only the silken coverlet. She touched the soft impression where her friend’s body had been. The place was still warm. She turned back to the table, where the birds were congregating.

  There was a silver box on it. Selene recognized it from her home. Isis and Dionysus together, the gods of her parents. She took a step toward the table. Then another.

  She ran her fingers across its embossed surface, feeling her parents’ faces in the silver. She’d seen Chrysate capture her mother within this box, and her father come from inside it, bowing to Rome. Her parents, she thought, dizzy. She was no one’s daughter.

  Selene fit her fingernails beneath the lid and began to pry at it.

  “Princess,” said an amused voice from behind her.

  Selene turned, hiding the box behind her back as quickly as she could.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she lied. “They sang to me all night.”

  She gestured at the birds, but as she moved her hand, they transformed into flowers again, hundreds of them dropping from the ceiling and onto the carpet. Selene caught a soft pink petal in her hand and crushed it in her fingers. She could smell the scent of roses everywhere now. The petals continued to fall, until they covered her bare feet.

  “You should not touch things that belong to others,” the priestess said.

  “I only wanted to see it,” said Selene.

  “Give it to me,” said Chrysate.

  Selene kept it behind her back, holding it tightly in her hand. She could not let go of it, even as she walked toward Chrysate, basking in the glow of the woman, her heart pounding as she came closer to her.

  Chrysate’s eyes shone with love, like Cleopatra’s should have, like Antony’s should have, and Selene felt herself pulled. Still, she held the silver box.

  “You must undress now for the ceremony,” Chrysate told her, and Selene did so. She undid even the band of linen about her chest, spinning as the priestess took the end of the fabric.

  She unclasped the pin that tied her robe about her shoulder, and was left naked.

  Her parents should have protected her from all of this, she thought with some deep part of her mind, and yet here she stood with the box that contained them in her hand. She could throw it into the fire. They could die. They were supposed to be dead already.

  She thought of her mother, spinning in the arena, on fire. She thought of her father, wavering, half visible, calling her mother’s name.

  Somewhere the birds were singing, and if there was a strange pain in Selene’s heart, a tearing feeling, a piercing feeling, she could forget that and inhale the incense that burned and the perfume that Chrysate was anointing her with. She could smell the flowers, and something darker. The petals reached up to her thighs now, drifting softly around her.

  They burned slightly
on her skin, but she was grateful for that as well. She felt as though she might sink beneath them. Chrysate removed her opal ring, and placed it on Selene’s left hand. It flashed a thousand colors, shining in the lamplight.

  The knife the priestess brought from her robes shone as well, a lovely thing, tooled metal with a handle in the shape of a hound. The blade was long and very sharp, and Selene appreciated that as she gazed upon it.

  It was a perfect thing.

  13

  At long last, Antony and Cleopatra came to a crossroad, where the path divided between the domains of the blessed dead of Elysium and the screaming laborers of Tartarus. At the crossroads, there stood an iron tower rising as high as the sky. Cleopatra looked to her husband.

  “Are you certain?” he asked.

  “We are here,” she said.

  “Yes. Ready yourself.” He hesitated for a moment before putting his hand on the door and opening it.

  Then, the only sound in the world was the sound of a creature unspeakably enormous, hissing and spitting in the darkness.

  “We must not stop here!” yelled Antony, grabbing her by the hand, nearly snatching her off her feet, but the creature had already sensed them. Cleopatra felt something pass behind her ankles, and suddenly she knew. It was all around them. Antony drew his sword.

  “Run when I tell you to run. The door to the throne room is on the other side of this.”

  She could hear its coils rattling across the stone, endless looping lengths.

  “A serpent,” she whispered.

  “No longer,” said Antony. “A shade.”

  It whipped toward her face and Antony shouted and slashed at it, but his sword went through its body. All Cleopatra could see were eyes, hundreds of them, glittering in the dark.

  “Cut off one head, and two grow in its place,” she murmured. “The Hydra.”