Maxian's face aged, his hair turning white, then it grew young again. Wrinkles faded from his skin; age spots mottled, then receded. For an instant he was bewildered by the sensation, losing his concentration, and his face changed again, his hair vanishing. He was shorter, more powerfully built, his head brown and bald, a snarl on his lips. Then Maxian's training took hold and he centered, drawing upon the power that burned steadily in the very heart of his pattern. Here was solidity, a foundation, an anchor. The Prince let events unfold around him while he regained himself. The brown man vanished, clawing at the air, fighting and struggling.
Then the Prince was whole once more, a shining beacon of power. When he became aware of this, the glow faded. He wanted to be a phantom himself, invisible to the enormous strength in the Oath. Bit by bit, with great patience, he disassembled the wards and shields that guarded him. As he had done before, he let power flow over him. He offered no resistance, letting the inertia in the matrices seize him, whirling his spirit form away.
A shining palace stood on a hill-not the confused warren of rooms that crowned the Palatine in the real, waking world, but what Augustus had built at the dawn of the Empire. Classical, severe buildings gleaming white under a clear sky and a pure yellow sun.
You found a city of brick, whispered Maxian's ghost, and left it a city of marble.
Vaulted rooms passed him, filled with throngs of people. Africans, Germans, Numidians, Persians, Scythians-an infinite array of diverse colors, faces, garb, jewels-all come to the city at the center of the Empire. He drifted through chambers of gold and silver and pearl, coming at last to the audience hall at the heart of the Palatine. Here, crowned in living laurel, his toga a simple white edged with the maroon so dear to the Empire, sat the Emperor in state, dispensing justice, granting mercy, a living god.
Maxian felt himself fray, nearing the center of the vortex. He abandoned physicality. He would hold on to only one thing, even though the storm of power around him wore away everything else. Memory, emotion, his physical body-all would be sacrificed. The shining, interlocking spheres of self that hissed and spun and burned at his core would remain. This was the thing that let him exert his will upon the world, his spirit, and its great power above all else was to press, ever so infinitesimally, upon the hidden patterns of the world.
The Emperor turned, his bearded face grave, one hand raised, holding a sphere of brilliant gold in one hand. The other gripped an ivory rod capped with a ram's head in dark bronze. In the figure, Maxian saw order and law and the regular passage of the seasons. In the staff abided power over all the lands of the earth. The Prince stared, compelled to obey, to bow down, to follow the rule and the law of the ancient city. The pressure on his will increased, the dissolution of his self rushed forward. Beyond the shoulders of the seated King, Maxian saw barren, stony mountains, like nothing that had ever risen on the Roman horizon.
A great pressure beat upon him, threatening even the tiny mote of self. It whirled this way and that, unable to withstand the King's awesome majesty. Maxian cried out, but there was no one to hear but the dreadful ruler, looking upon him with reproach and dismay. The lamb at the Emperor's feet bleated, begging for the stern judge to show mercy.
– |Thyatis lurched across the sand. The crystal lights blazed with a pure, colorless radiance. The sky high above was fully dark, leaving the walls of the arena a shimmering sea of white faces. Blood oozed down her arm and she had to keep shifting her grip on the spatha. Ahead, four Persians surrounded Candace. The other women lay in heaps, throats cut, bellies slashed open. The Nubian woman dodged this way and that, desperately trying to avoid their blows.
A raw low growl escaped Thyatis. Blood clouded her vision, spilling from a long gash on the side of her head. Despite her wounds, she felt a burning fire driving her limbs to move, her heart to beat.
The crowd grew hushed, seeing her dragging one leg, each step bringing her closer to the foe. Flowers began to rain down, cast from above. Thousands of petals, flung out in silence. Thyatis did not look up, did not see the shining faces of women and girls and young men crowding close to the retaining wall, watching in silence as she staggered forward.
One of the Persians, a man with a forked black beard, shouted and rushed at Candace. The Nubian woman slashed wildly at him, making him jump back. He laughed, a giddy, mad sound, whirling a curved sword over his head. Candace stabbed at him again but missed. While her back was turned, another man, this one armed with a hooked pole-arm, slashed at the back of her thigh. Candace screamed and the hook tore open her flesh. Thyatis began to run, her head down.
Pain flared in her wounded leg, sharp bright flashes as her sandals hit the sand.
The Nubian woman tried to spin, hacking with her sword, but two of the men rushed in, chopping at her with axes. She was thrown down, one blow cracking her armor. Thyatis felt her legs grow light, blood fire roaring in her ears, speeding her across the sand. The man with the hooked pole scurried to one side, trying to get a clean blow at Candace, who rolled feverishly on the ground, trying to evade the blows raining down on her. Thyatis ran up beside him, face twisted into a mask of rage, and slashed the spatha across as she came even with him. He glanced sideways, suddenly, catching sight of something out of the corner of his eye. The sword bit into his neck and he choked, stumbling, and then Thyatis ripped it out through his spine. The head, spinning in the air, gave out a choking wheeze and bounced away across the sand.
A hushed sort of moan rose from the crowd, and a soft thud-thud, almost unheard, began to fill the air.
Candace cried out as an ax chopped into her stomach. Red fluid welled around the shining metal. Thyatis, still soundless, rushed in, the spatha blurring in a figure eight. The swordsman on the left, his face wrapped in a blue scarf, shrieked, his shoulder suddenly laid open. The man on the right threw himself away from the flashing weapon, sprawling on the ground. Thyatis swung around, feet planted on either side of Candace, who struggled for breath. Thyatis settled her grip on the spatha's hilt.
Forkbeard charged her, screaming, the curved sword a glittering whirl around his head. Thyatis let him come, seeing his wild white eyes grow huge, then flowed into the blow. A haze of blood drifted over her, but she was already moving, spinning away from a new attack.
The thudding became a drumming, though no voice broke the silence, only the massed beat of a hundred thousand feet on the stone.
The last axman leapt in, hewing wildly, his ax cleaving the air with manic energy. Thyatis skipped back, parrying and parrying again. The man was screaming, a high, wailing sound which flew up into the air and vanished, swallowed by the night. Blocking, Thyatis caught the haft of his ax on her sword guard, and they grappled, faces inches from each other. Thyatis let him come, throwing his full weight upon her. She twisted and he flew, slamming into the ground. She kicked the ax away, then knelt, reversing her own blade and driving a convulsive blow into his chest. Ribs cracked and splintered, red fluid bubbled up through the armor, then the light faded in his eyes.
She stood, unsteady, her limbs trembling like jelly. She turned and saw Candace's head rolled to one side. A thin trail of bile and mucus spilled from her mouth. A roaring filled her ears, but it seemed only she could hear it.
"Are there more?" Her cry echoed back from the marble walls. Are there more?
– |Maxian guttered, his spirit lashed by an invisible wind, but he did not surrender. The power that gazed down upon him contained order and the regulation of all things. The Prince bent his will into the wind. Here, in this gleaming palace, in the perfect world that it contained and represented, there was one thing missing. Maxian bent his will upon the Emperor, upon the air around him, upon this hidden, invisible space. He grappled with the power, striving to bend it, ever so slightly, to his will.
It would take so little, for he had the book of Khamun to guide him. Not so long ago, though it seemed an age had passed, he had summoned the ancient tome from the air, binding it from dust and hair and the flesh
of the earth itself, all from a single page. That ancient sage, one of the masters of the art, had built this hidden world in a frenzied burst of genius, driven by fear for his own life.
Augustus had not suffered the Egyptian to live, but Khamun's work had outlived his master. The pattern embraced Maxian: buildings and palaces, bakeries and forges, the tramp of soldiers in the ghost streets of this phantom city, the cut of women's clothing, the hairstyles of men. The lives of millions had been yielded up, a day at a time, to reinforce and extend that perfect vision. Each life painted the colors a little brighter, filled in some hidden corner, made everything richer. All it lacked was one… simple… thing.
Beside the Emperor, seated on his carven throne, the air distorted and flexed. Sparkling motes flowed to it, flying from the hair of the seated king, from the polished stone that gleamed underfoot, from the air, from gardens half seen through the arched windows. Maxian's spark burned low, crushed into the marble floor, ground under the invisible heel of the guardian of all that was and all that is. His sight failed, his mind fled, darkness lapped around him. He raged against the night, calling on all powers and deities to aid him.
There was no answer.
The shimmering form standing at the Emperor's right hand faded and then grew stronger, burning with colors, filled with wavering patterns. Something new was trying to force its way into the hidden world. It met resistance; the strictures of the form of the palace did not allow it to be born. Pressure grew against it, faster and faster, even as it took shape.
At the center of the chamber, surrounded on all four sides by signs and symbols, a tiny burning white mote compressed and compressed, until, at last, there was only a pinprick of light. And then, with a rippling in the stone and air, it went out.
– |Galen stood, his face a tight mask, and looked down upon the sand. His right hand was clenched tight, wrapped in Helena's fingers. Full silence filled the amphitheater, disturbed only by fifty thousand people breathing. Below the Imperial box, four of the masked attendants approached, bearing the bloody, torn body of a woman. They halted, silver masks staring up at the Emperor, firelight glinting on their tusks.
"Does this woman live?" Galen's voice rang out, clear and distinct. Every single person in the vast crowd could hear him, from the senators leaning raptly forward in the first tier, to the sailors hanging over the edge of the deck at the uppermost level. "Has she breath in her body?"
"Yes, Lord and God." The attendants spoke as one. They seemed to speak from the depths of the earth itself. "She lives and is victorious."
"Then I grant her, not only the crown of the victor," Galen raised a crown of holly in his hand, showing all the prize, "but also her freedom, for she has expiated any crime, any accusation, any calumny in noble combat, before these witnesses and before the gods."
Thyatis lay on a bier of spears. There was a noise, and she raised her head, seeing above her, suspended in darkness, the face of a man. He held high a crown and she knew it was hers. Struggling, she turned to one side and raised an arm, strong and muscular, still garbed in mail, links fouled and spattered with blood, and saluted him, the Emperor, Lord and God.
"Ave, Imperator!" Her voice was weak, but like his it carried in the silence. Then she fell back, exhausted and spent, and she knew nothing more.
– |High on the wall of the Flavian, Gaius Julius crept out from the stairwell. The trembling air around the Prince had suddenly stilled, then a wind had risen, fluttering the torches. The old Roman felt unaccountably weak, barely able to walk. He stumbled, then fell to the pine decking. His vision blurred; a hissing filled his ears. Gasping for breath, he crawled forward, his fingers barely touching the body of the Prince.
Gaius Julius collapsed, unable to move, his mind in a vise of pain. Just beyond him, the Prince lay, still and cold, without breath, one hand flung out. Wind rustled through his cloak.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The Wall Before Constantinople
A single lantern gleamed, hanging from the back of a wagon. Nicholas blinked sleepily, then crawled out of his tent and into the pale circle of light. Centurions moved in the darkness, passing from tent to tent, rapping sharply on the posts with switches. Men woke at the sound, yawning. The northerner rubbed his eyes and stood up. Morning was not far off, but the predawn was pitch black and cold. Even in summer, the wind from the Sea of Darkness was chill. "All right, time to get up."
Nicholas kicked Vladimir's large and hairy feet. The Walach growled menacingly but crawled out anyway. His hair was a wild mess, all tangled and greasy. Dwyrin followed, yawning cavernously. "Pack up," Nicholas whispered, beginning to gather up his own gear. "If the gods smile, we won't be back here."
"Good," Dwyrin mumbled, shrugging on his tunic. Both men pulled on their boots and laced up the straps. "A nice warm bed in the city-a feather bed!-would be better than this bramble patch."
Vladimir laughed-he liked sleeping out under the stars. "You don't sound like a barbarian to me. Always going on about baths and beds and cooked, hot food!"
"Who ever said Hibernians were barbarians?" Dwyrin said, an arch tone in his voice. "We're not mud people like the Britons!"
Nicholas ignored their banter, his mind dwelling on the day's battle. He pulled a heavy felt shirt, the thoracomacus, on over his undertunic. Getting kitted out-putting on layers of padding, then armor, then lacing up the armor and checking the straps-took almost thirty grains. Unlike the simple mail shirts of the Dann or the Germans, the Romans used a complicated, overlapping set of metal bands. When it was properly fitted, it could turn a spear or a sword. There would be plenty of use for it today.
Around the three friends, in the darkness, the Roman army roused itself, rustling and clanking, hushed voices filling the gloom. Some lanterns and torches were lit, but not too many. The legate hoped to catch the enemy unaware with a dawn attack. Nicholas snorted, thinking of the possibilities of success. An army in motion was not quiet!
– |Zoe rode in darkness, letting the mare find her way, following a rutted, muddy road winding between the outer and inner walls of the Arab circumvallation. Her heart was heavy, both to leave the warm bed in her tent, and from the summons she had received. Weeks ago she had furiously demanded immediate notification when the body of her aunt was recovered from the wreck off Sestus. She hadn't expected to be roused before dawn by an exhausted courier. A ship had docked at the pitiful harbor the Arabs had built on the Propontis, carrying the sarcophagus of the Queen. Somehow, in this chill night, the matter didn't seem urgent.
Shivering, Zoe pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders. The heavy wool helped a little, though the slowly healing wound on the side of her head was sensitive to changes in temperature. Why was it so cold in this damned damp country? Why did Khalid have to be so insistent about recovering the body? Why couldn't it have waited until dawn! Why did I get out of bed? I must be mad.
Ahead of her, the shape of a wooden tower appeared out of the gloom, gray against black. The mare turned, following the path, but Zoe's attention was drawn upwards. The men in the tower were stirring and she could hear them whispering to one another. "What is it?" Her voice carried well in the quiet darkness.
"There's a noise, upslope. The Romans are moving around."
Zoe reined in the mare and turned to the west. Sighing at the interruption, she settled her breathing and brought a litany to mind, letting the words focus her will and sight. Patterns unfolded in her mind, brilliant flowers with infinite petals. When she was done, she raised her head and looked upon the nighted world with burning eyes. The slope stood out in sharp relief, studded with burned-out farmhouses, copses of trees, hedgerows and stone walls.
In this early hour, it boiled with movement. Thousands of flamelike apparitions filed down the slope, wending their way through the hedges and yards, crowding on the roads. Zoe felt a cold shock run through her, seeing the glittering yet subtle array of patterns moving with the army, rolling across the fields. Thaumaturges walked at the hea
d of each column, a shuttered lantern held up behind them, guiding the legionaries. Others would be crouching in the darkness, on the ridgeline, bending their will upon the Arab soldiers sleeping behind the parapet and wall, soothing their minds with thoughts of sleep and home and safety.
"Rouse the camps!" she shouted. The side of the tower was close at hand and she leapt from the back of the startled mare, seizing the rough wooden poles. She swarmed up into the tower, a battle meditation hurrying through her mind. "Sound the alarm! The Romans are attacking!"
The men in the tower gaped at her, faces glowing in her witch-sight. The enemy pattern clung to them like a gossamer web, fouling their thoughts. Zoe cursed and sketched a sign in the air, drawing power from the mud and earth below, then made a ripping motion. Both men suddenly startled awake, alert. "Now, you fools!"
Turning, she drew her hands fiercely inward, bending her will onto the stone and rock and wood surrounding her. Below the tower, pools of water dried up, hissing into the soil, and the air trembled. An alarm bar began to ring, hammered by one of the watchmen. Zoe stabbed her hands out, unfolding her palms, and light blossomed in the dark.
There was a shockingly loud boom and the sky lit with a brilliant white flare. All across the slope, suddenly transfixed by the burst of light, thousands of Romans halted in shock, seeing every gyre and barn and tree silhouetted by the intense radiance.
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