The storm of Heaven ooe-3

by Thomas Harlan

  At the fringe of his vision in the waking world, a troop of the Sarid galloped forward, their lances glittering in the midday sun. Despite his bold words, Uri was not leading them. He looked on, still sitting at Jalal's shoulder, still arguing. They had moved into the shade afforded by an old Roman triumphal gateway that stood, alone, a few hundred yards from the gate of the city.

  Odenathus felt something in the air, a change in pressure, a sharp spike in the gradient of power in the land around him. Reflexively his hand ran through the mnemonic to call a pattern into waking memory. In the hidden world, the glittering blue sphere of the Shield of Athena sprang up, surrounding himself and the two arguing captains.

  The earth shook, booming like a drum slammed by a heavy hand. The Sarid lancers, who had just come within a spear's throw of the gate, vanished in an eruption of sand, blazing limestone dust and red-orange flame. Burning horses catapulted through the air, their riders enveloped in white fire. Odenathus' mare reared, screaming. The two captains shouted in fear, their arms raised to shield their faces. Within seconds steaming ash, burning skulls and scorched limbs rained out of the air from a spreading black cloud. It drifted away from the gate.

  Odenathus tried to rise. The mare had run away, her reins trailing on the dusty ground. The shield remained intact, though it was wavering in time with the thudding of his heart. Both Jalal and Shadin had managed to remain mounted and they were hiding behind the ancient gateway.

  "Get away," Odenathus shouted. "It might be trapped."

  It seemed the defenders had prepared a hidden ward under the ground, waiting for the Arabs to ride up the road to the gate. His brow furrowed with effort, he put forth his strength again, sending his will forth, probing for the enemy. In the ether the blast area flickered and gleamed with violence, making the patterns around it shimmer and twist like light in a rising pillar of heat.

  There was a figure on the rampart, Odenathus could feel him, almost see him like a burning brand. The enemy was strong. Gritting his teeth, for he had never tried to strike at an enemy without Zoe at his side, their minds and powers amplified by the battle-meld, he chopped his hand at the distant wall. The air around him chilled and the nearest statuary on the triumphal gate splintered and cracked. Power leached from the dead ground and the sky and the roiling motion of atoms in the air. A cyan burst flared against the gate.

  The enemy sorcerer's shield rippled as the blow struck, radiating heat and light like a rainbow. Odenathus swayed to his feet.

  The enemy flexed his strength and Odenathus' shield fractured like a pane of glass struck by a hammer. Crying out, he was blown fifty feet down the road by the shock of contact. The air where he had been standing boiled and burned with a fierce blue-white light. The triumphal gate, licked by the roaring flame, cracked and shattered. Black smoke billowed out of the sandstone. Then half of it crumbled, in a roar of tormented stone and wood, to the ground. Bits of brick and facing pattered down around Odenathus in the sand.

  The Arab army streamed away from the city at a full gallop, men shouting in anger and dismay.

  The Palmyrene raised his head, feeling the world spin around him. His cloak was on fire, sending up a curl of bitter white smoke. At the last moment, he had managed to invoke a second shield. This had saved him. The enemy was very, very strong. Weakly, Odenathus threw off the smoldering cloth. His face and hands stung from the light.

  "Oh," he gasped. "You've grown mighty, old friend."

  The fire signature was far too clear, for Odenathus had seen it before, in the training camps and practice fields of the Legion.

  Jalal jogged past, on foot, shouting something at the youth lying in the dirt. The burly soldier had Uri slung over one shoulder like a side of beef. The horses were disappearing in a cloud of dust. Odenathus' ears were still ringing and he couldn't hear.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Theodora's Library, The Palace of the Bucoleon, Constantinople

  "Pustulating, corrupt, wine-soaked, illegitimate wretches!"

  Martina, Empress of the Eastern Empire, walked quickly, her face dark with rage. The corridor she passed through was dark and stained by mold. In the vast sprawl of the Bucoleon, there were areas damaged by earthquake or fire that had never been rebuilt. Each new emperor tended to add a new hall or courtyard rather than refurbishing the old. Her sandals, heeled with wood, made a sharp clack-clack on the ancient tiles. In places the tessellated floor had decayed into gravel or even dirt. At the moment, Martina noticed neither that nor the increasing darkness as the hallway tended downwards, following the slope of the hill towards the Military Harbor.

  "Degenerate freaks, wombed from some diseased whore! Lower than the scum on the sewers, they are…"

  Her fists clenched in time with her words, and blood seeped from the cuts that her fingernails made in her palms. The Empress negotiated a series of decaying marble steps without incident. Her feet knew the path she followed, even if her mind was wholly involved in a violent fantasy in which she choked the breath from certain men with her own hands.

  Her morning had been, as most were in this unsettled time, filled with a slow procession of those seeking her favor. She had been in her salon, seated, with servants around her to bring a cool drink or a fan, if she desired. Lady Penneos had been by her side, discussing some matter involving her grandson. Many of the nobles in the city reviled the Empress in secret, or whispered behind their hands if she appeared at the theater, but still more sought advantage for their children or their children's children. The woman hoped that Martina could find a position for her grandson in the palace. It was a tedious business, this bartering of favors and implied gifts.

  Martina was quite on edge already, dealing with the irritating woman, wishing she could return to her books and scrolls in the workroom. She had begun doodling a history of the great Constantine the Founder when she had first arrived in the capital. It was far more interesting to chronicle his heroic efforts than to listen to Lady Penneos.

  Then Rufio had entered, unexpected and uninvited, his face a cold mask. Martina had frozen herself, flooded with fear, seeing him in his dark armor in the airy, light space of her salon.

  "Most noble and gracious lady, some humble servants beg your illustrious presence."

  Martina had risen, her eyes searching his face, finding nothing. Rufio's eyes, which of late had seemed sympathetic and even warm, were like chips of flint. Out of the corner of her vision, she suddenly realized that more guardsmen were waiting outside the archway that led into her rooms.

  She had bent her head towards Rufio, her voice low and tight with distress.

  "My husband?"

  He had shaken his head minutely. The tightness in her chest and stomach eased.

  "Please, most noble lady, come with me. The logothetes of the ministries seek your guidance."

  – |Her feet, unerring, led her down a broad ramp of stairs puddled with slowly dripping water. Walls of brick loomed over her head in heavy barrel vaults. There were small, high windows, but years of dust and soot from the cookfires of the city had obscured them, cutting off even that source of light. The long hallway echoed with the sound of her shoes. Bats and birds, disturbed by her passage, fluttered near the ceiling. The Empress, ignoring the mud clinging to her slippers, marched down the hall, her voice ringing back from the peeling frescoes.

  "Oh, to gouge their eyes out! To feel their fat, doughy flesh under my hand… to tear out their lying, duplicitous, soft tongues! Lowest of the low, schemers, wretched connivers, peddlers, mountebanks, fools with overbred hands and feet!"

  She came to a door, half ajar and shrouded with cobwebs and the trailing bits of a tapestry that had long ago fallen into mildewed fragments. It was an unremarkable door, save that candlelight spilled around it, lighting up a pale stretch of blocky tile. Given the depth of her anger, however, Martina did not notice the illumination. Furious, both with herself, with the logothetes and the ministers, with Rufio and with the gods themselves, she slammed the door open
. It made a terrible screech and then bounced on its hinges.

  "Cursed, vile worms! Things that gnaw in the earth, disturbing the cursed dead! Oh! I would… excuse me. I didn't know anyone was here."

  As it had always been, the room was dark and filled with shadows. The tall racks of scroll cases, the shelving bent with heavy leather-bound books, the familiar musty odor of decaying paper were all as they had been. Even the archaic-style oil lamps that hung down from long brass chains still protruded out of the gloom. In place of the long wooden table, however, there was now a… well, a thing and a startled-looking young man.

  A priest, actually. Barely more than a boy. Perhaps only sixteen years old.

  Martina smiled, a sort of sickly smile. She unclenched her fists and gently closed the door.

  The boy was staring at her with wide eyes in a round, moon-shaped face. He was also hiding, half behind the table, with a heavy ivory scroll case in his hands raised in protection.

  "My name is Martina," she snapped, then paused, collecting herself. "Who are you?"

  The boy flinched at the tone in her voice, slipping lower until only his eyes watched her from just above the tabletop.

  Martina stepped forward, striding around the table. Her dress, now stained with algae and black, pitchy mud along the hem, rustled as she bent down next to the boy. Her tousled brown hair, which had come completely free of its pins and ribbons, spilled down around her face. She grasped the collar of his tunic and dragged him to his feet. No one could say that the Empress was a brawny woman, but when she was mad…

  "I'm…" The boy gulped. "My name is Alexos. Please, milady, don't… do anything violent."

  Martina released him and grinned guiltily.

  "Sorry! You're just… I expected the library to be empty."

  Alexos ducked his head and made some kind of a sign with his hand.

  "Your pardon, milady. I was set here to, ah, well, watch the telecast. No one said there would be any visitors. And, really, there haven't been. You're the first," he finished brightly, trying to smile. Martina narrowed her eyes, watching him slowly sidle away along the length of the table.

  Her voice rose slightly; "Young man." He stopped. "I apologize for startling you."

  "Oh," he said, standing very still. "It's no problem, really."

  "But," she said, raising a slim white finger smudged with ink. "I have had a troubling day. I don't want to talk to anyone, or see anyone, for quite some time. So-you should go and find a temple somewhere and pray."

  When she was done, she settled a particularly steely glare that she had learned from her mother on him. The boy blanched, his hand rising to his throat, but at the same time he did not move.

  "Milady, I have been given careful orders by the Emperor not to leave this device unattended. A message could come at any time! It is my sworn duty, and I will not set it aside."

  With that, his chin rose and he took a step forward. Saying Emperor had filled him with resolve. Martina stepped forward too, her lip curling in a snarl.

  "I've no time for priestly duty, boy. I am the Empress of the Roman Empire and I want some peace and quiet!" Her shriek rang hollowly off the brass lamps and the walls of dusty books. The priest did not move, even though the Empress' face, contorted by anger, was only a finger's width from his own.

  "No," he said with a quiet dignity, looking down a little at her. "I will not leave my post. If you want peace and quiet, I believe that there are some tombs at the end of the passage. At least, it smells like there are."

  Martina hissed and spun around, striding quickly to the end of the table. This interview was going much the same way that her morning conversation with the ministers and logothetes had gone.

  – |Rufio had ushered her into a long, narrow room clouded with smoke. The walls, hung with soot-stained tapestries, seemed very close. Martina kept her face impassive, calmly surveying the men seated around the fringe of the chamber. She did not sit, though there was a plain wooden chair set in the middle of a cleared space. Rufio was close behind her, with two of his Faithful blocking the door. The guardsmen were very large, with chests like barrels and arms like tree trunks. If she put her mind to it, Martina knew that she could summon forth their names. Her memory was exceptional. At the moment, she was occupied with suppressing mild revulsion.

  The men in the room, those that had summoned her, were sweating slightly. She could smell their chalky odor, even through the thin, bitter-tasting smoke that filled the room.

  "Good morning, noble lords," she said in an even and refined voice. It was her Empress voice, which she had cultivated for discussions with country cousins and drunken ambassadors. The court had not regained the tremendous sense of ritual and ceremony that had marked some of the old emperors. Things had been in far too dire straits for that. Martina, from her reading, had hopes of restoring certain customs, particularly those that kept the Empress from having to deal with slobbering barbarians and slimy little men like these.

  "Glorious Empress, you honor us with your presence. Pray, take your ease."

  This was the smallest of them, Colos, if she matched name to face correctly. He had been recently promoted to logothete of the civic works. Behind her placid expression, Martina tensed. There had been some business with the previous minister… something involving Theodore. A fragment of a conversation swam back up into her memory. Yes, the old minister had been forcibly retired at the behest of the Prince. That red-bearded oaf had suggested a replacement, too. It seemed odd, in retrospect, that a powerful minister should be so easily brushed aside-but if his own ministry had already offered up a replacement?

  Martina smiled, a thin stretching of her lips, and she met the bureaucrat's eyes directly with her own. The man's smile became waxy and fixed, then he averted his gaze.

  "I would not waste the precious time of such noble men by taking my ease. You summon me in haste, without formal invitation, without speaking first to my husband. There must be some crisis."

  The ministers glared openly at her now, their hands twitching a little on their brocaded robes. The matter of the Emperor's health, as far as Martina knew, was never openly broached. A simple fiction maintained in the palace-the Emperor? He was fine, just… somewhere else today. The bureaucracy continued to run as it had always done, just without the Emperor. The prospect of openly discussing why the Emperor might not have been available to give permission was skirting very close to the cancer that ate at the palace.

  "Most noble Empress," said a deep, gravelly voice from the back of the room. "A concern has been raised by some loyal but deeply worried men."

  Martina felt a chill steal over her. A figure, mostly shrouded in the dim smoky recesses of the room, moved an arm into a puddle of candlelight. Her left eyelid twitched and even with Rufio standing behind her, solid and heavy in his armor, she felt exposed. The arm was pale and thick with fat. Rings of silver and gold bit into thick, sausagelike fingers. The figure leaned a little forward, revealing a placid face marked by slabs of fat and small, brilliantly dark eyes.

  "We beg a moment of your time, gracious lady. It is a small matter, just the accounting of some wax, some twine and perhaps a little ink."

  The logothete of the Imperial tombs smiled, his small, round teeth gleaming in the candlelight. The other ministers seemed to recede into the walls, becoming small and insignificant. Martina felt her hackles rise, and a wash of goose pimples rippled along her arms. The heavy brocade and silk of her dress failed to keep her warm.

  "Master Nidus, I am surprised to see you come out in the light of day." Martina pitched her voice to match the chill in the room. "But you intrigue me. You speak of twine and wax. These are simple items, easily acquired in the marketplace. Surely any servant can be sent to fetch them."

  She felt Rufio stiffen, but she ignored him and the outraged looks on the faces of the Keeper of the Imperial Inkstand and the Holder of the Legal Binding. Both of those men were turning a shade of purple she normally associated with aubergine
ripe on the vine.

  Nidus laughed, his thick jowls bouncing a little. His voice was dry and slithery, like snakeskin.

  "Glorious Empress, we would not trouble you, I would not trouble myself, save that there is unease in the community of the palace. There is dissent, if I may be so bold, among our little family."

  Martina remained standing, her hands folded at her waist. The chill remained and deepened. She heard the threat in the rumbling voice. The master of the tombs and crypts was not to be trifled with. Hadn't this one survived four emperors? She felt the anger and the hatred in the other men like heat radiating from a hot griddle. Inwardly, she heard Rufio's cautioning voice urging her to leave the writs and edicts alone, to let them sit.

  I can't! Things have to get done! The Empire is only running on inertia now…

  "Dissent? Does this twine, this ink, trouble someone? Are their responsibilities too heavy? Do they wish, perhaps, another position-something less taxing?"

  Martina turned slowly, her face creased by a cold smile. One by one, she met the eyes of the men sitting in the room. Most of them looked away or could not meet her gaze at all. In the end, there was only Nidus, sitting half in the darkness, half in the faint, shadowy light. Many of the logothetes had been born in the palace. Some had never set foot beyond its walls. Some of them were freed slaves. None of them would last long outside, in the vigorous cacophony of the streets. The tomb master, he was of a different stripe. His position came from the priesthoods. Some said that the role of Custodian of the Tombs predated the great Constantine himself. Even before the Eastern capital had been raised up, there had been an ancient Greek city, Byzantium, on these hills.

  Some of the tombs were older yet.

  "When a family is troubled," said Nidus, his rasping voice growing deep, "the pater must keep order. The gods tell us this in ancient tales. A strong father ensures peace and goodwill. Some of the children…" the corpulent man paused, the thick folds of skin around his eyes wrinkling, "…in such a family may grow distressed, even angry, if they think that the rightful usages and rights of the father are being usurped by another."