“But it’s a legion.”
“It is,” Vorenus agreed. “Come down from Jerusalem.”
“They came to deliver a message?”
The old man turned toward her with a raised eyebrow, but if he thought her observation truly odd he said nothing. Instead he just nodded. “True enough. It seems that Augustus Caesar has finally recognized Aretas as the rightful king of Nabataea.”
“Recognized him?”
She saw Vorenus frown as he thought about how to answer her. “It means he agrees that Aretas should be the king.”
Now it was Miriam’s turn to frown. “But he is the king. He’s been king for four years, ever since Obodas died.”
Vorenus smiled now. “All true. But Caesar thinks most of the world belongs to him. He doesn’t imagine there should be a king in Nabataea without his consent. So Aretas declaring himself king without his permission has been a thorn in their relationship.” His voice, though already guarded, became even softer. “It doesn’t help, of course, that Obodas was probably poisoned by Aretas.”
“I thought Syllaeus poisoned him?”
Vorenus shrugged. “He may have administered it, but you can be sure that Aretas was behind the plot. He certainly gained much by it. And it’s also rather convenient that Aretas was so quickly able to discern Syllaeus’ involvement in the murder and then hand him over to the Romans for judgment.”
They walked in silence for a time, Miriam lost in thoughts of court intrigues. As they neared the end of the colonnade, they turned south down a side street, headed toward their little home. When they’d walked even farther, she finally spoke again. “Do you suppose Syllaeus is dead?”
“If not yet, he will be soon,” Vorenus replied. “We owe him much for helping bring us here from Egypt all those years ago, but I cannot say I liked the man. I don’t think Petra will miss him.”
Miriam nodded, and once more she saw in her mind’s eye the lopsided grin of Abdes Pantera. “So Caesar agrees that Aretas can be king? That’s it? The Romans will leave now?”
“Not quite,” Vorenus said.
The street moved over a steep rise just before they reached their home, and as they crested that hill Miriam took in her breath and stopped short. The valley south of the city walls was dotted with a thousand tents and campfires, filling the space between the walls and the terraces there.
“The legion will be staying awhile,” Vorenus said, his voice hinting at worry. “Herod is threatening to attack the city from Jerusalem, and the legion is here to keep the peace.”
For a second Miriam felt a strange rush of excitement at the thought of seeing Pantera again—he could surely teach her more about the bow, she told herself—but in an instant it was washed away by the stark, dangerous reality that she was certain Vorenus already recognized: the Roman encampment was between the city and the southern valley of tombs.
A legion now stood between the keepers of the Ark and the empty tomb where it quietly lay.
4
THE BOAT FROM ROME
ALEXANDRIA, 5 BCE
Didymus stood at the stern of the ship, watching as dawn broke across the walls of Alexandria behind them. Fishing boats were moving in and out of the ports of the wide harbor, and early seabirds were already squabbling across the brightening sky. Looking closely, he could just see the cupola of the Great Library rising over the jumbled buildings of the city, and the gilded statue of a man that stood atop it, holding an opened scroll toward the heavens. As the first rays of the sun struck it, the statue shined like a beacon of golden fire.
He’d spent so much of his life in that building, beneath its magnificent statue, that he’d never truly appreciated what it meant, the possibility symbolized in the lifting of that scroll, the yearning for divine inspiration.
Sad to realize it only now, when he was certain he was seeing the statue, and the magnificent city of Alexandria, for the last time.
The ship that carried him away was a simple Roman freight ship, little different from perhaps a dozen other single-masted ships that he could see riding the winds out to sea. A thick-bellied craft, it sat both tall and heavy in the water, no doubt leaving it more stable in the open waves. The rising part of its wooden sides was painted deep blue, and the carved shape of a yellow swan was perched upon the stern beside him, settled perfectly between the long twin tillers that steered its path. It was a comfortable but unremarkable ship, and Didymus was certain that the simplicity was a deliberate ruse—though it carried no freight, their vessel carried a most remarkable cargo of men and demons.
The scholar had seen them all, seen them with his own eyes, yet still he had a hard time believing what he saw.
It had been hard enough just to comprehend the demon that had come to the Library in the company of Thrasyllus. The astrologer was right when he said that the stomach-twisting bone cold that he’d felt at first would diminish over time, but that fact was of little comfort beside the horrible recognition that such a thing might walk the earth.
And indeed it did walk. Didymus had been uncertain of it when the demon was in his office: it moved through the room with the indescribable grace of the most perfect dancer, as if it floated across the floor rather than walked upon it. But as they’d moved through the deserted halls to gather up the books he desired, Didymus had seen how its legs moved in the semblance of walking, and when they’d set themselves upon the streets he’d seen the demon leave a single footprint as they crossed a track of dirt where workmen had been repairing the pavement of a walkway.
Didymus had felt great comfort in that footprint. He had etched it like a stone in his memory. The footprint meant that the demon, though not meant for this world, could perhaps be harmed by it.
The philosopher Epicurus, the scholar knew, had once said that although men could defend against most of the ills of the world, “against death, we men live in a city without walls.” It was true enough, but until he’d seen that footprint he’d wondered if the demon had walls against death itself.
The footprint was hope that the demon could be killed.
He’d thought much on the matter, plotting as best a lifelong scholar could manage while they’d walked through the dark streets, but such plans were dashed when they’d finally reached the boat at the port. There was another demon waiting for them there, a manlike thing that was every bit as unnaturally perfect and cold eyed as the first. And worse, there were two other men aboard as passengers. One was a dark-haired man in his forties with flints of gray in his full beard. Didymus did not recognize him, though his accent was of the east. The other man, with whom the first seemed to be in constant conversation, was Tiberius, the heir of Rome.
Whatever hope Didymus had felt in that footprint had fallen away as surely as the wake of the ship that now traced their voyage away from the port. The scholar had little chance of defeating one demon, much less two, and the presence of Tiberius left no doubt that there were even greater forces at work. He would try to play along, try to buy himself time to find a way forward that wouldn’t give them what they desired, but he could not imagine how it could be done.
As the scholar stared out at the retreating city, he felt Thrasyllus come up to stand beside him at the rail. “Am I bothering you?” the astrologer asked.
“No. Just watching it go.”
Thrasyllus let out a long breath. “This is the second time I’ve left this city thinking I’d never see it again,” he said.
Didymus looked over at the younger man, whose shoulders seemed to be weighed by heavy regrets. For a moment he started to open his mouth to ask him about the letter to Apion, but then he saw out of the corner of his eye the pale figure of one of the demons watching them. “It is a beautiful city,” he said.
“It is. I have missed it terribly.”
There was so much that Didymus wanted to ask him—where the demons had come from, why he was helping them—but he wasn’t sure if it was safe. “I’ll miss it, too, I think.”
For a long time they
were silent. Thrasyllus, Didymus could see, had dropped his gaze to where the waves were breaking against the hull of the ship. He appeared to be lost in thought. “I’m sorry,” the younger man finally said, his voice quieter than it had been before. “I’m sorry that I had to bring you into this. I didn’t want to. I just had no choice.”
We always have choices, Didymus thought to himself. It was a lesson he’d not known when he, too, was a much younger man—when by helping the future Augustus Caesar he’d almost caused the death of Caesarion, one of the greatest men he’d ever known—and he knew that it was a lesson that could not be taught. It had to be learned.
“Tiberius has someone I love,” the astrologer continued. “I just didn’t have a choice.”
“I understand,” Didymus whispered.
Heavy footsteps approaching on the deck caused them both to turn away from the receding city. Tiberius was there, his eyes shadowed despite the morning light. Behind him the two demons stood, their own eyes black and impassive as stone. The white linen of the sail was snapped taut in the wind, pulling them faster and faster toward the chaos of the ocean. Looming above them was the towering height of the Great Lighthouse, the fiery light at its summit trailing a steady drift of smoke that carried ahead of them out to sea.
“So this is the librarian,” Tiberius said.
“My lord,” Didymus said, bowing slightly.
Tiberius grunted. “Coming for you meant a delay. But Thrasyllus insisted that we could never get what we want without you.”
“I will do what I can to help, my lord,” Didymus said, using the tone that he reserved for those most unfortunate occasions when he had to talk to royalty or politicians. A pathetic but very helpful voice. As he had once instructed Apion, it was the balance that was key.
“For both your sakes, I hope so,” Tiberius said. Then he nodded in the direction of the other passenger aboard, the full-bearded man who Didymus did not know, standing alone at the prow of the ship. “Read your books, prepare with your studies, but Antipater can know nothing of it, do you understand?”
Antipater. Didymus noted the name, already running through the scrolls of his mind for what he knew of him. It was not much. He was the firstborn son of Herod the Great, who had ruled Judaea for nearly seventy years. Antipater and his mother Doris had been exiled for many years when his father had taken on a new wife, but he’d eventually been recalled to the court after Herod had executed that wife and much of her Hasmonean family. Herod was a powerful but dangerously unstable man, yet Antipater had managed to survive his father’s erratic paranoia and even become his sole heir after Herod had ordered the execution of two of his other sons only a few years earlier. Why the heir of Judaea was with the heir of Rome in the company of two demons who sought the Seal of Solomon, Didymus had no idea.
“Of course,” Thrasyllus said. “We will be careful.”
Tiberius grunted again, then turned to the two demons, who watched them all with unblinking eyes. “Bathyllus and Antiphilus will see to it that you are,” he said.
Both demons gave the slightest of nods, but when Tiberius strode off toward Antipater at the front of the ship, only the one they called Antiphilus glided silently behind him. The few sailors manning the ship, Didymus could see, gave both men a wide berth, and at least one visibly shuddered. None of them, the scholar imagined, would live to see the large payday they’d surely been promised for this passage. Unlike him, they had limited usefulness to whatever Tiberius had planned.
The thought gave him little comfort.
Beneath him, the ship began to buck against heavier waves as they passed the harbor wall. He turned back to the stern, back to the shrinking Alexandria, and grabbed hold of the railing. Beside him he saw Thrasyllus do the same.
“We’re in this together,” Thrasyllus said quietly.
“It seems so,” Didymus agreed. The statue atop the Great Library, that man yearning toward the heavens, was just a glint above the city of Alexandria now. The scholar let out a long sigh. “Jerusalem?”
Thrasyllus nodded. “I think so.”
“If Tiberius thinks that Antipater can help him get into the Temple, he will be sorely disappointed. He’s first in line to rule Judaea after his father, but his father was an Idumaean,” Didymus said.
“An Idumaean?”
“It’s an old kingdom, south of Judaea, leading up into the mountains. Some books say that it was once centered in Petra.” Didymus saw that Thrasyllus started for a moment at the mention of the ancient city. “You know of Petra?”
“Not much,” the astrologer said, recovering himself to smile. “Just that it’s built into the mountains themselves.”
“So it’s said,” Didymus agreed. “Some also say that the great mountain above it is the rock from which a Judaean king once threw ten thousand Idumaeans to their deaths, though I think this probably isn’t so.”
“You don’t think that place is Petra or that the king did that?”
The librarian frowned a little. “Both, I suppose, though it is certain that the Judaeans and the Idumaeans have never been too fond of each other. A lot of the Idumaeans have converted to Judaism, for instance, but they’re still like foreigners in that land. They’re a people apart. And the fact that Herod managed to become king of Judaea is more about politics than anything else. He was appointed by Caesar, which certainly doesn’t help to make him more popular with the people. They hate Romans.”
“I thought Herod ordered the construction of their Great Temple,” Thrasyllus said. “We heard of it even as far away as Mauretania. My king and queen had trouble finding a few particular masons because they were already hired away for the project.”
Didymus shrugged. “Since you left the Library I’ve invited more and more Jewish scholars to come and share their knowledge with us, to add their writings to our collections.” Thinking of how he might never again see his shelves of books brought up a sudden well of sorrow in the librarian’s heart, and he had to shake it away. “Well, they tell me that Herod’s Temple is indeed magnificent. One of the great wonders, they say. And it contains their most holy artifacts, housed upon what is surely their most holy of sites. But they know Herod didn’t build it out of faith. He might have built it to bring some of the people to his side, but the truer tale is that he surely built it for his own glory. Believe me, the priests who control the temple wouldn’t permit King Herod himself to go searching through it for the Seal of Solomon—much less Herod’s son. And the idea of letting Tiberius and us in there … it’s impossible.”
The two men looked back over to where Tiberius and Antipater were talking at the front of the boat. “I don’t think that’s what Tiberius intends for Antipater to do,” Thrasyllus said.
“What then?”
The astrologer swallowed hard. “He’s helping Antipater to kill his father,” he whispered. “Poisons. The deed might already be done by one of Antipater’s lovers. But if it isn’t, they’re bringing more to try again. And they have forged letters blaming it all on any rival claimants to the throne.”
Didymus blinked. “You know this?”
Thrasyllus nodded. “I’ve heard enough to put together the clues. It makes sense.”
For a moment the librarian stared out at the chaos of the sea, playing the scene out in his mind. If Antipater murdered his father, riots would surely erupt in the streets. Roman legions could march to restore order, and Tiberius could take the chance to seize the Temple in the name of protecting it. Thousands would die, but Antipater would have his throne, and the son of Caesar would get what he wanted. “All so that Tiberius can get the Seal of Solomon,” Didymus said, thinking it through. The Seal was a signet ring, according to legend, which had been given by God to Solomon, the wisest of all men and king of the Jews in ancient days. It was said that with it the king could command both angels and demons. What Tiberius thought he could do with it …
“Yes and no,” Thrasyllus said. “He wants the ring, but he knows it isn’t really the Se
al of Solomon.”
Didymus turned, his eyebrow raised. “It’s not?”
Thrasyllus was staring off into the distance again, but he wasn’t looking at Alexandria. Didymus could see that he was looking at something much farther away, a memory that he could not let go. “It’s a Shard of Heaven, Didymus. It’s the last of them.”
Didymus felt his heart sink. Thrasyllus knew. Tiberius knew.
“They already have the Shards of Water and Fire,” Thrasyllus whispered. “There’s a third demon, and she will have Life and Air soon. They have plans to get Earth, too, though I don’t know where it is. What the Seal controls, I don’t know, but the demons think it’s the last of them.”
Didymus glanced back, saw that the demon was far enough away not to hear a whisper. “I know what it does,” he said.
“You do?”
Didymus nodded slowly, knowing that he could never let Tiberius really find it, and knowing that he had to hope he could trust Thrasyllus to do the same. Far behind them, a cloud passed over the sun, and the thin light that had still been glinting from atop the Great Library went out. “The Seal controls Aether,” he whispered. “It connects and binds everything. It is the very essence of God.”
“But I thought God is dead,” Thrasyllus said.
“I thought so, too, once.” Didymus looked up past the Great Lighthouse at the wide dome of the sky and the last of the disappearing stars. “But I was wrong. God’s not really dead, I don’t think. He’s just waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For us,” Didymus said. “God is waiting for us.”
5
A MOTHER’S LOVE
CAESAREA, 5 BCE
Cleopatra Selene watched with amusement as her husband, sitting on the throne beside hers, endeavored to listen to the latest reports on the reconstruction of the old market in the city. The overseer providing the update was a thorough and organized man, and Juba was trying very hard to give him his full attention despite the fact that their five-year-old son was sitting in his lap and pulling on the curls of his father’s beard.
The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3) Page 5