The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3)

by Michael Livingston

  After a moment, he opened them. His eyes looked like they might be wet. “Aaron,” he said, “the brother of Moses. Do you think it’s true? Do you think he really passed through here? That it all really happened?”

  “I know it did.” Miriam looked down to Petra, down toward the distant place where the Ark of the Covenant rested in the silent dark. “Our people call this the Valley of Moses,” she said.

  Pantera stared after her. “The Valley of Moses,” he repeated. “From the Exodus. The home in the wilderness.”

  Miriam only nodded. Then she raised her arm and pointed to the prominent mountain against which Petra was built, the one that loomed up over the tomb of the Ark. There were two great stone obelisks upon it, lifting skyward like horns. “And that,” she said, her voice quiet, “that is his mountain.”

  7

  THE KING AND THE DEMON

  CAESAREA, 5 BCE

  In the silence of an empty court, Juba sat on his throne. The curtains behind him were all pulled back, and the welcoming breeze of a moonless black night flickered the tongues of the two lit braziers that sat to either side of the raised dais. The little light they managed cast dancing shadows across the open space before him, the negative images of the twinned seats of the king and queen.

  No, Juba thought. Not twins. Not anymore. Not while one sat as empty and lifeless as the room’s swept floor of tiled stone.

  Selene leaving was the right thing to do. It was the only thing they could do. He was sure of that.

  And yet this night felt like death. It felt like a hole had been cut through to his heart, as if it had been stripped out of him. He’d cried when they’d made the decision. He’d cried when she’d held little Ptolemy in her arms and told the squirming boy that she had to go away for a while. He’d cried again when they’d packed up the Shards they had and she’d turned to go.

  And he had cried every hour since.

  The chest in which they had kept the Palladium of Troy and the Aegis of Zeus all these years sat in the middle of the chamber before him. Its lid was open, laying bare an empty space that felt like a mirror of his own body. All that was left was a terrible void where he’d once been full and sure.

  How had it come to this?

  He’d been sixteen when he’d found the Trident of Poseidon. The old priest who’d kept it—Syphax had been his name, Juba remembered—was the first man he’d ever killed. He didn’t do the killing back then, but he’d ordered it just the same. Ordered it to preserve the secret, to hold the power, to better prepare for vengeance against Rome.

  How many had died on that journey? There was Syphax, and then the man who’d carried out that killing, Laenas, had died on his behalf in Alexandria. Juba himself had killed his own loyal slave Quintus, the first time he’d used the Trident of Poseidon to take a life. And there were so many others whose names he didn’t know, but whose souls weighed on him in dreams turned to nightmares. The old craftsman who’d helped to repair the Trident. The innocent men on the trireme at sea, when he’d first truly engaged the enormous power of the Shard. Then the hundreds who died at Actium by that same divine strength. The men beneath Alexandria when he’d tried to find the Ark. The men he’d slaughtered when, for a moment, he’d had possession of that artifact’s enormous might. Caesarion had been among those, he knew: the half-brother of Selene, massacred by his hand. And the nameless, faceless Cantabri he’d destroyed in a heartbeat when he’d taken their lives in escaping from Vellica.

  All dead. A number beyond counting.

  And nothing compared to what he’d brought into this world in Carthage.

  He rarely allowed himself to think on that night—the terror was too real—but now, as he sat alone in the throne room of Numidia, he forced himself to remember it all.

  Rome had taken so much from him—his father, his homeland—yet back then Juba was finally beginning to let his thirst for vengeance go.

  Then he’d learned what Tiberius had done to Selene while Juba was a captive in Vellica. The idea of it made Juba want to spit even now, even so far away from the act.

  Tiberius had raped her. Juba knew there was no medicine to take away the memory of that horror, but he’d thought that vengeance might be a salve for the wound upon her soul. He couldn’t take away the pain of what she’d experienced, but he could give her a chance for revenge. He could return to her the power that Tiberius had taken away.

  And yes, Juba admitted to himself, he’d done it in his own rage.

  He remembered placing the four Shards at his feet in the night-dark temple of Ba’al Hammon in Carthage, near the pit where the worshippers of that god had once burned their own children alive. The Trident of Poseidon, the Lance of Olyndicus, the Palladium of Troy, and the Aegis of Zeus. He remembered putting on the Aegis, feeling the warmth of that armor upon his chest, and then he remembered drawing the Shards to himself, one by one, summoning their enormous powers.

  Darkness overwhelmed so much of his memory then. Not a blankness of not remembering, but a shadow that was a will not his own. It had taken hold of him as he’d held the Shards. It had drawn him on, directed him, and he’d pulled forth from that shadow a power that stood triumphant upon his heart long before he knew what he had done.

  He’d opened a gate to Hell.

  Three demons had entered the world. And if not for the sacrifice of Isidora—one more death upon the ledger of his life—far more would have come through.

  The darkness had controlled him, but he knew he’d had a choice. He’d always had another path before him, and he’d not taken it. All along.

  And so all of it, from the day he’d found the Trident to this night alone—all of it—was his fault.

  The softest hush in the shadows stirred him from his memories, and Juba raised his head. He let out a long breath into the darkness. “I’ve sent everyone else away,” he said into the darkness. “We are alone.”

  The demon drifted into view from the far corner of the room ahead of him, slipping silently out of the darkness to stand, half in the black and half in the feeble light of the lamps. It was the woman, or at least the one who seemed made in a woman’s image. She wore pale, ghostly cloth over her alabaster skin. It shimmered gently. Her hair was the color of golden thread, falling in slivers of shadow over her delicate brow. Her eyes were dark pools that swallowed everything—the light, and, for a moment, his soul.

  She was perfect, even more beautiful than he remembered.

  “I remember you,” she said.

  Her voice was a whispered song, and it brushed over Juba like a feather upon his skin. “And I know you,” he said.

  Her face was a balance of symmetry, her smile showed precise lines of teeth. “You brought me here,” she said. “You opened the way.”

  Juba swallowed hard. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. I wouldn’t have done it if—”

  “Oh, I don’t think you mean that,” she said, cutting him off with what seemed a whispered rebuke. “I think you knew. You wanted it. In your heart. Vengeance.” Her face lifted, as if she was scenting the still air. “For a woman, was it?”

  “I’m done with that. It’s over.”

  “I’m certain she was lovely. A pity she’s not here.”

  Juba stood, and he made careful steps down from his throne to stand behind the empty chest. “Selene is gone,” he said, and not for the first time tonight he wondered if he would ever see her again.

  “So she’s run away,” the demon said. She pursed her lips, then ran her tongue across them. “I’d heard as much, but I needed to see if it was true.”

  “You’ll not find her. And the Shards are gone, too.” Juba kicked over the chest, letting it fall open toward her. “You’ll never find them, either.”

  The demon glided forward, her hips a rhythmic sway. Her eyes rocked from his to the empty chest and back. They were unreadable and blank, like the eyes of the sharks that he’d seen fishermen pull from the bay. “I didn’t just come for them. I came for you, too, F
ather.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You brought me into this world.” Her head lowered as her gaze moved down over his body, then she looked up and smiled. It was a look of unbridled lust. Even his wife had never looked at him that way. “I’ve learned so much since then. I work for Empress Livia now, did you know that? One of her maidens. She calls me Acme.”

  “I’m not your father. I opened the gate. But I didn’t want to. I—”

  She slid up to him, smooth as silk drawn across glass. “I feel like I owe you something,” she said. “You brought us. You want us. You want me.”

  The smell of her filled his head. It was the scent of roses after a rain. “You’re a demon,” he managed to say.

  Her head shifted to one side. “A harsh word for something greater than you.”

  “Greater?”

  “You’re made in our image, Juba of Numidia. You and your kind. You’re copies.”

  “Copies?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “But imperfect ones. Images seen through a broken mirror.” She looked him up and down once more. “But you’ll see that I’m not flawed.”

  “You’re perfect, Acme.”

  She was closer, her face rising up toward his. “Yes. Perfect. In every way.”

  “Perfect,” he repeated, knowing it was true.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “But you’re not Selene.”

  The blade in his hand was not a long one. He had not dared to imagine he could hide even a small dagger. At best, he thought, he could hide a short knife. So he’d sharpened it. Then he’d carefully gripped it in his fist, awaiting his chance. Now that it was here, he didn’t hesitate. While the demon had been looking into his eyes, he’d spun the blade into readiness. Then he’d punched it forward, burying it in her gut.

  The demon screamed, a high-pitched and piercing shriek, and her hand shot up, slapping him away from her.

  As if he’d been flung by several men, Juba flew backward through the air. He crashed against the steps of the raised dais, grunting with the impact. The knife skittered away into the dark.

  The demon hissed, and her fingers felt up the wound at her belly. Juba, his head spinning as his hands and feet scrambled for purchase on the stone, saw that the lamplight wetly reflected off her fingers when she drew them away. He saw, too, that the nails upon her pale fingers were long. And they sharpened to a point, like a hand of tiny daggers, or the talons of some deft beast.

  But she can bleed, he thought. And if she can bleed, she can die.

  Until this moment, he’d actually doubted that it could be so. Perhaps Selene had a chance after all.

  The demon stared for a moment at the dampness upon her sharp-nailed fingers, then she stretched out her neck and smiled at him across the shadows. “You’re a fool,” she spat. “More clever than I suspected, but still a fool.”

  Her hand lowered to her side, and she crouched as if preparing to pounce. If she felt pain, she showed no sign of it.

  Juba’s feet finally landed solidly on the stone beneath him, and he kicked himself up the steps toward the thrones as she lunged forward with a scream. Her fingers scratched across the stone just inches from his feet, grating in the dark.

  Juba lashed out with his left foot, kicking her across the face. Her head turned with the blow, but she came onward, hissing as she sprang up to land upon him just as he reached the top of the dais.

  The demon’s clawed fingers lunged for his throat. Juba caught one with his right hand but only managed to deflect the other: he screamed out as her nails ran furrows across his skin before sticking and plunging into the flesh of his left shoulder.

  Her pale face was above his, her bone-white teeth bared as her lips peeled back in an ever-widening maw. She hissed again, and where before he’d found the scents of roses her breath now smelled of dead and rotting things.

  Juba’s free hand fumbled upward to try and grab her hand and pull it away, but the nails pressed harder into him, twisting. His left arm went limp and fell back. “It could have been different,” she sneered. “It didn’t need to end like this. You could have helped me.”

  “Never,” Juba gasped. Each breath brought new jolts of pain from where her nails had dug into him. “Never again.”

  “The girl has gone to Rome. The city is talking of it. Where is she taking the Shards? Tell me.”

  “No,” he panted. “Never.”

  She ground against the bones of his shoulder, and the agony became a white flash of fire that struck away his breath and forced him to close his eyes as his heartbeats tolled the time of his suffering.

  At last the demon stopped probing and Juba coughed in contorted pain. “Please,” he managed, “I can’t—”

  “You can, and you will, or I will begin to tear apart your softer pieces.” Her tone was idly threatening, as if she was in no hurry at all. “And if that still fails to persuade you, there’s always the boy. Ptolemy is it?”

  Juba’s eyes widened. “You don’t know—”

  “Where he is?” For a moment her black eyes registered something that might have been pity. “You fool. I know exactly where he is. Tell me where she’s taken the Shards.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  One of her fingers twitched. “Tell me.”

  Juba focused his resolve, then he painfully lashed upward with his knee, trying to get her off, fighting for a chance to survive, but she spun away from the thrust. Spinning on her grip in his skin, her feet scampered across the stone like the legs of a crab until she loomed over the top of him.

  Juba screamed, high and raw and ragged, and in that moment the door of the throne room finally opened.

  The demon looked up, shrieked in anger, then twisted and shoved herself away from him. One of her hands took one last swipe at his face, ripping jagged lines across his cheek, but the wound was not deep.

  Arrows sang out in the chamber, whistling over him to clatter and break upon the empty thrones. He heard the demon hiss once again, and then he rolled over and looked up to see her shadow disappearing over the edge of the balcony beyond the open window.

  The footsteps of his guards were rushing forward. “My lord!” one called out.

  “I ordered you away,” Juba said. He started to pull himself to his knees.

  “There were screams, my king. You’re wounded.”

  Juba waved him off. “Just pursue her,” he ordered. “Don’t try to fight her. Just see that she gets aboard a ship. See that she leaves Mauretania.”

  The guard hesitated. “My lord, you don’t want us to—”

  “No,” Juba said. There was enough blood on his hands. “Don’t try to fight her. Go. Now.”

  He heard the men snap to salute, then he heard their feet rushing away.

  When they were gone, Juba knelt in the darkened hall between the empty thrones of Mauretania. Alone, he would await the dawn. Alone, he would weep for what he’d done, and for what he’d failed to do. And alone he would await the safe return of the son he’d had with the one true love of his life.

  She had a chance. He knew that now. She had a chance, and the demon would pursue her, away from her husband and her child, just like Selene wanted. It was all that they could do, and he had to hope that it would be enough.

  The blood dripping from his shoulder and face made a pool about his knees, but Juba did not notice it.

  He only knew that he was alone.

  Alone. Always and perhaps forever.

  Alone.

  8

  THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM

  OUTSIDE JERUSALEM, 5 BCE

  No one had welcomed them when they arrived in Judaea. This seemed hardly unusual to Thrasyllus, but he’d never been anyone worthy of such honors. He was only a mere scholar. Through all his reading he’d never heard of celebrations over the arrival of a scholar—not even one who was the head of the Great Library itself, as Didymus was. Their more politically powerful companions aboard the ship from Alexandria, however, were both
ered by the lack of a greeting waiting for them in the new port that Herod had built.

  Antipater in particular was clearly very distressed. Herod had apparently sent his son a message in Rome, warmly summoning him back home to Judaea, and though Antipater had every intention of poisoning his father, he was still greatly bothered by what he considered a lack of respect. He was the heir of Judaea, he kept repeating as they began the carriage ride inland to Jerusalem. Did he not deserve pomp upon his return from Rome?

  Antipater’s dour mood turned to palpable fear when, late in the afternoon, they reached the outer villages around Jerusalem. Cresting a hill to first look upon they ancient city, he found his welcoming party at last: a contingent of Herod’s guards, who directed them to a small home off the road.

  Standing at the door was an old woman with a look of unease on her face that sharply contrasted with the rich finery in which she was clothed. She said nothing, only pressing a single finger to her lips before moving inside through a door. Their little party dismounted and followed: two princes, two scholars, and two demons. The carriage was pulled around to the side of the house. The Roman guards waited outside.

  It was a modest home, Thrasyllus could see. He’d seen many just like it, spread from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. A main room, a kitchen, a sleeping chamber or two. Not rich enough to have its own toilet or bath, but not so poor that it didn’t have a four-foot-high statue of some god or another—Thrasyllus couldn’t tell who the weathered standing figure was supposed to represent—beside the entrance.

  Inside, it was just as the astrologer had assumed. The main room had sparse furnishings—a table and chairs, a chest, and a reclining couch—but it was simple fare. There was no great wealth here, and no inhabitants to be seen beyond the old woman who stood in the middle of the open space, waiting for them to enter. Beyond her was an open window, and through it Thrasyllus could see a hillside and the edge of the ancient walls of the city of Jerusalem.