by Ilana Waters
“Much has happened since then.” There was an undeniable darkness in her voice. She pushed me away.
“Such as?” My own voice darkened as well. I found myself wondering if she’d met another man, one younger than I. Thoughts flashed in my mind of how quickly I could find out who, and all the creative ways I could kill him. I did not share these thoughts with Sabine.
With her back to me, Sabine pushed her hands out from one another. A pair of curtains parted, revealing a tiny window. Sabine peered out. She pushed her hands together, and the curtains closed. She turned around, frowning.
Who—or what—is she looking for out there, at this time of night? Or does she think someone will come looking for us?
“After you left us at the Forum, I slipped away from Egnatius and the rest—including my slave—to buy herbs for various spells.” She ran her hands over one another. “Dusk fell, and I was on my way home. That’s when I saw them.”
“Them?” I repeated. If it’s more than one man, I’ll have trouble killing them all undetected. Still, I was fairly certain I could manage.
“The cult,” she said emphatically, as though the answer were obvious. She sat down on the bed, smoothing the sheets again and again. “Men and women—a whole mess of them, drunk and making offerings to the goddess Carna.” Her voice lowered to a murmur. “She who opens things that have been closed, and closes things that have been opened.”
“Then I could certainly use her help tonight.” I sat beside Sabine and slipped my hand between her legs. She pulled it away roughly.
“This is no jest, Titus! You take great risk drawing her ire.” She fiddled with the emerald bracelet I’d given her from my last campaign, mindlessly turning it around on her wrist.
I let out a deep breath, and the tension in my body left with it. All is well. She hasn’t found someone else. I had no idea what had gotten her so wound up, but I was certain I could soothe her . . . and procure my own enjoyment in the process.
“I’m not worried about offending some minor domestic deity.” At the moment, I was more concerned with Sabine’s ire. It might turn her away from our bed, which I was sorely in need of tonight. There was always the option of taking what I wanted by force, but Sabine was not the woman to travel that route with. I got on my knees and began pulling her stola up, showing her I’d do whatever it took to relieve her uneasiness. “I’ll make an extra offering of bacon fat later tonight, I swear by all the gods.”
“They were making rites to Carna,” she repeated, brushing me aside and standing up. She paced the room. I was left kneeling in front of the bed, irritated and confused. “But Carna is about more than pork and beans. It is said that she alone marks the boundaries of this realm.” She pounded one fist into her palm, and paced faster. “Boundaries magical and mundane. She alone decides.”
“My love, I don’t understand. What does this have to do with—”
“She herself may be one of the doorkeepers of the world, the ianitores terrestres, guarding passage to the earthly sphere.” She went to the window as if to open the curtains and look out again. Then, her body snapped around abruptly, as if she’d changed her mind. “Surely you know that version of her name, cardo. How the Roman mortals repurposed it as the main north-south street of their towns. Did you never wonder why the surveying of these roads was attended by augural procedures aligning terrestrial and celestial space? Surely it is to honor her, to placate her.”
“Perhaps.” I stood up, my brow furrowed. “But placate her for what reason? Surely beings like us are in no danger from—”
“These cult rites were nothing like I’ve ever seen.” Sabine went on as if I weren’t there. She was talking madness, staring into space. If her movements weren’t so sharp and brisk, I’d have sworn she’d had too much wine. “Oh, they appeared ordinary enough at first glance. Several people in a corner of the arcade, in front of an altar, drinking from a chalice filled with wine. Five or six of them. Not patricians—probably a few common plebs. But I noticed something peculiar about them, about the contents of the chalice. It reddened their mouths and lips much more than ordinary wine. Then, there was their laughter.”
“What about it?” I lay back on the bed. Perhaps Sabine would take the hint. “Surely you’ve seen drunkards laughing before, your beloved husband among them.”
Sabine shook her head. “This was different. Their laughter sounded . . . odd. Like pieces of glass clinking together. Not like the sound a human would make.”
“Not human?” I sat up partway, suddenly intrigued. “They are like us, then?”
“No, not witches either. I noticed a few had cuts on their arms. Just minor scrapes: the kind mortals get all the time. But when they drank from the chalice, the cuts healed instantly!”
“So they are like us.” I sat all the way up, and leaned forward. “Fellow witches. We should find them and speak to them. I’ve never met another of my kind besides you.”
“No, they are not witches. Don’t you see?” Sabine wrung her hands. “Whatever was in that chalice healed them. It wasn’t their own magic. And though those who drank from it exhibited strength like I’ve never seen. One lifted an enormous column of broken marble beside him with his bare hands. With one hand, Titus!” She thrust her palm forward at me. “As if it were an apple he’d plucked from a tree. And their skin was pale and cold after they drank. It only lasted a few minutes, but it frightened me. For a moment, their flesh looked like stone. As if they had commissioned living marble statues of themselves. Then, it was gone.”
This was beyond bizarre. I’d never known Sabine to be frightened of anything, not in the entire time I’d known her. “Perhaps it was a trick of the light, beloved. You said it was dusk, after all.”
“It had nothing to do with the light!” Sabine gritted her teeth. “I know what I saw. And what I felt. I sensed the magic in the chalice—and all around them—right away. It was deeper and more powerful than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“Deeper than me?” I began winding the toga off my body, smiling at her. “More powerful than the feelings I give you?”
Sabine turned away. “They were too drunk to notice when I took the chalice.”
I stopped removing the toga, and stood there with a handful of cloth. “You took it? To do what with it? Make your own offerings to Carna, the goddess of the door hinges?” I placed my hand on my chest, feigning distress. “Fate protect us all from squeaky fittings!”
“Enough of your jibes, Titus!” Sabine whirled around, and raised her hand as if to strike me. “Yes, your precious Romans have absconded with Carna and made her the goddess of pigs and beans. But she is not to be mocked! She can open and shut celestial doors at whim. She could turn the world on a new axis if she wanted to. Planting beans is like planting any other type of seed. It could spring forth new life . . . or total destruction.” She lowered her hand.
“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. I debated if I should continue removing my clothes. “And she is said to ward off strixes from babes left alone in their beds.”
“From what I saw tonight, I think those legends have it backward,” Sabine said somberly. “If you’d been there, Titus, you’d have seen it, felt it. This profound magic that seemed to come from the depths of the earth itself. I’ve lived for centuries; never have I seen the like. You forget the legends of the strix. Some are said to be demonesses who disguise themselves as mortals and drink their blood.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” I draped the toga back over myself—for now. “But you said the worshippers were all mortal. You were sure of it. You cannot believe such nonsense about demon goddesses.”
“What if it’s not nonsense? We exist. Why can’t there be other magics in the world?”
“Why this sudden religious fervor?” I asked. “You never gave any gods such reverence before. Your paranoia over this chalice is overcoming your good sense.” I don’t understand this at all, I thought to myself. I was under the impre
ssion she half-believed gods were figments of our imagination. What is it about this chalice that unnerves her so?
“That’s why I took it with me. To observe it, study it.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You mean you have it here? Didn’t the worshippers raise a fuss when you tried to collect it?”
Sabine shook her head. “They were far too drunk by then. I pretended to be one of them. I raised the chalice to my lips. I giggled and toasted Carna like the rest of them. A few of them were delighting in their new gifts, rising a few inches in the air, flying as we are able to do.” She waved her hand around vaguely. “But the drink had the usual effects of wine, or they’d had a great deal beforehand. Eventually, they all wound down, like a spinning top that slows. Then, when they were too drowsy to notice, I hid the chalice in the folds of my stola and slipped away.”
“And no one else noticed these oddities? With all the crowds at the Forum, surely someone must have seen them acting . . . more than human.”
“It was dark at that point, and they were in a far corner of the arcade. With everyone rushing home to prepare their festival feasts, the worshippers went undetected. And a good thing, too,” she murmured. “Revealing such things could lead mortals to start asking questions about our kind.”
“And what if they crop up again, these worshippers?” I pressed. “What if someone catches them using their new powers? Or they throw caution to the wind, and in their drunken folly, demonstrate them for all of Pompeii? It might raise questions about magic. Talk of demons, of purging the empire of dark forces. Of people like us.”
“Impossible. The healing, the flying, the changes to the skin . . .” Sabine’s eyes searched the ceiling, the far corners of the room, as if for something that did not want to be found. “All seemed to disappear after a few minutes. I doubt they retained these powers, unless they had more of this special brew stored elsewhere.”
“Let us pray that they don’t.” I glanced at the tables around the room, to see if they held a flask of wine. But there was not even water. “The last thing we need is a witch hunt on our hands. But what did you do with the chalice? What if that idiot Egnatius finds it—or one of the slaves, while cleaning?”
Sabine put her finger to her lips, even though there was no one around to hear us. She bid me follow her out the door, which I did, grimacing. The farther away we got from the bed, the greater the odds were of ending the night unsatisfied. And it was the perfect opportunity for such satisfaction. I didn’t think Egnatius would find us for hours, and as we slipped through the hall, I saw I was right. We walked quietly by him and the other guests, passed out on couches, dead to the world by way of drink.
What hours of ecstasy are we ignoring for this goblet-related lunacy? I wondered.
Sabine peeked at Egnatius and the others, too. But she didn’t even purse her lips or shake her head the way she usually did after seeing such displays. She merely stepped resolutely ahead, steady-eyed, until we came to a mural of some dancing fauns on a wall. Trompe l’oeils were popular in those days: illusions appearing real enough to fool an onlooker. Almost like a mortal form of glamour. This one looked like the fauns could’ve taken us by the hand at any moment to join their merriment. I squinted at it. I’d been in Egnatius’s house so often, I knew it as well as my own. Yet, I didn’t recall ever seeing this mural before. It must have been new.
With one last glance to make sure we were alone, Sabine closed her eyes, murmured some words, and waved her hands over the mural. My own eyes bulged to see the mural melt away—and the wall with it. I’d seen Sabine perform magic before, of course. But this was different. We stepped into a room that was unfamiliar to me. Once inside, she waved her hands where the mural had been, and a stone wall appeared behind us. She cast a ball of light so we could see in the darkness. It wasn’t a large room; perhaps ten feet by ten feet. Its smooth walls on all sides had neither doors nor windows.
“What is this place?” I whispered to her.
“I created it,” she replied simply. “To hide the chalice from Egnatius, and from whoever else might come looking. At least until I can understand the accursed thing.” That was when I saw it.
In the center of the room, on a podium, stood the chalice. It was about eight inches tall, and, as far as I could tell, looked to be pure silver. An etched leaf and vine wound its way around the stem and cup. I walked up to the chalice and peered inside it.
“There’s still wine in here,” I said. The red liquid was darker than most wine. “How can there be any left, if the worshippers drank it all?”
“They didn’t,” Sabine answered. “They only managed small sips before going into that strange state I described. There was a good portion of it left, as you can see.” I reached toward the chalice.
“Don’t touch it!” Sabine snapped. I blinked at her and dropped my hand back to my side. She’d never been so harsh with me until this evening, not in all our decades together.
Sabine took a deep breath. Her next words were softer, though no less grave. “I still don’t understand what it is. Look in the chalice again. Can’t you see the magic swirling within? Can’t you feel it?”
I stepped forward and peered into the chalice again. This time, I tried to use my magical senses, not just my sight. Then, for the first time tonight, I understood a little of what Sabine meant. A sort of wave came over me. Something thick and heavy, teeming with magic. Like humidity mixed with black smoke. I close my eyes and inhaled.
“I can,” I replied. “But I don’t know if it’s something to be feared. I do get the sense it’s as old and powerful as you say. No doubt a foreigner—fresh from a ship—brought some new potion to enliven the mind. Perhaps it is just an exotic form of wine.”
“Your senses deceive you, Titus. It is not wine, but blood.”
My mouth hung open. “Blood? Whose blood?”
“I don’t know. But not a mortal’s, or a witch’s either.”
“I thought you said it was wine.”
“That’s what I thought, at first. The mortals who partook of it acted drunk, as if it were the most potent wine they’d ever tasted.”
“Did you taste it?”
“Of course not! Gods only know what it would do to creatures like us. And you must promise me you’ll never try to, either.” Apparently, my answer was not quick enough. “Promise me, Titus!” she urged.
I put my hands up in surrender. “I won’t, I swear!” I promised over and over. This was mostly because I hoped it would grant me entrance to other rooms Sabine alone held the key to this night—ones not built of mortar and stone. “But how do you know it’s not wine if you didn’t drink it?”
“There are spells one can use to determine the components of liquid. You know them—I taught you. I simply took a few drops from the chalice and performed them.”
“All right, then, but I still don’t see why you’re so animated. Odysseus himself was said to restore a minute amount of life to the souls he consulted by offering them blood to drink.” I looked on the chalice with renewed interest. “With any luck, this is something similar.”
“Be that as it may,” Sabine said, “we should not experiment with it until we know more.”
“As you wish, my love. Did you ask the worshippers where they acquired it?”
“By the time I realized what it was, their state precluded them from answering logical questions. It was like trying to get a straight answer out of Egnatius when he’s drunk.”
“Speaking of which,” I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and nibbled her ear, “perhaps that is a situation we might take advantage of. Right here, right now, in fact.” I slipped one hand inside the front of her stola. “Did it not occur to you that you’d inadvertently created the perfect place for an assignation? We should have thought of this years ago.”
Faster than I thought possible, Sabine twisted herself out of my grasp. Her eyes blazed with a fire I’d never seen before as she glared back at
me.
“You forget, Titus. Carna rules the heart. And goddesses of the heart are not to be trifled with.”
“You are the only goddess of my heart,” I protested. I was laying it on thicker than usual, but what did it matter? The sooner I flattered and soothed Sabine, the sooner I could enjoy her charms.
“That may not be enough to save us now, Titus,” she said ominously. She stared at the chalice. “I cannot help but feel this potion is like the ill wind that blows no good. Something come to warn us of imminent disaster.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Now, you’re just being morbid.” I confess, I was beginning to feel the same way. It was obvious she wasn’t going to bed with me that night. “There’s no reason to believe this chalice is a harbinger—of doom or otherwise.”
“Perhaps not, but something is coming, Titus. I don’t know what, but I know it will be . . . permanent.”
Chapter 6
You all know what happened next.
Vesuvius did not erupt that night, of course. Even the most casual student of history knows that. But in the months between that fateful day and the festival of Carna, Sabine obsessed over the chalice. She tried to find out everything she could about it, work magic on it, track down its worshippers. But they seemed lost to the wind—dead, or unwilling to be found. Hordes of people traversed in and out of Pompeii every day, especially during festivals. It was possible those who drank from the chalice were only passing through the city.
As Sabine requested, I did not make another attempt to drink from the chalice myself. There was no sense in going back on my promise to her. One, she was no fool, and would find out. Undoubtedly, she had magical wards on the secret room that would let her know of unauthorized entrance. Two, I didn’t care about the chalice as much as she did. So, it held a magic liquid. If it didn’t lead us to more of our own kind, what good did it do me? Besides, I was on and off campaigns that summer; I hardly had another chance to steal a glimpse of the silly thing. Let it be Sabine’s pet project, then, I thought. With any luck, it would keep her occupied—and maybe even happy, after a while, if she could figure out what its power meant.