They stood in a grotto, as the Prince had promised. It was lined by mossy boulders and floored with thick soft grass and dusted with tiny blue flowers. Water trickled over rocks somewhere nearby, but Krista could not make out where the stream was. Dim green gloom crouched under the overhanging trees and puddled underneath the walls of stone. The way into it had wound down through hidden passages in the brush and brambles, over smooth rocks and past sharp-edged cliffs. It lay, she guessed, at the center of the bowl on the mountaintop, the uttermost secret within the wilderness of rock and thorn. Pollen drifted in the air, catching the last light of afternoon, sparkling in slowly falling clouds. The blue sky seemed far above, distant beyond the tops of the boulders.
The Prince had seemed giddy, almost drunk, since they had climbed that last little way down the rocks into the grassy sward. He had run out into the center and whirled around, his arms spread wide. Krista had crouched, nervous, at the edge of the open space. Her arms were covered with goose bumps. This place made her uneasy. Maxian had been laughing and talking to himself the whole time. It set her nerves on edge, hearing him chatter like a little boy.
"Listen!" Maxian looked up, his eyes crinkled up in a grin. "Put your hand on the ground."
Krista, swallowing nervously, knelt on the grass and placed her palms on the thick loam. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Grass twisted under her hands, and she felt the crumbly soil. She closed her eyes.
First there was nothing, only the cool feel of the ground. Then there was something, a hum or a trembling sensation. Then she felt it, deep and distant, muted by unimaginable distance. A slow, heavy surge, a throbbing, the beat of a vast drum. Breath hissed between her clenched teeth, and she jerked her hand away as if burned by a hot skillet.
The mountain had a heartbeat, as slow and regular as a sleeping child. She looked up. The Prince was standing, his face filled from within with joy. It seemed that years of care had dropped away from him.
"Can't you feel it? The power in the earth? It burns like a star, like the sun."
Krista shook her head. She felt nothing but growing fear and a trickle of cold along her back.
"Don't you feel the air?" Maxian was grinning fit to burst. "This place is free of the curse, held in balance by this power in the mountain. I can rest here. I can work here." He rubbed his hands together in delight. "This is what I was missing all along-a sanctuary!"
Krista summoned a smile and accepted his embrace, though she felt cold even in the warmth of his arms. When he spun her around, picking her up off of the ground, her eyes were bleak.
– |Song rose from the dining hall, echoing off firelit walls and round columns in the garden. Alexandros was singing, standing by the fire with his hand on the back of a couch covered with a blue-and-red quilt. He had a strong voice, and it carried well, filled with longing and a hint of glory won. Gaius and Maxian were reclining on couches under the sloped roof that ran around the inner garden of the house. The remains of a hearty dinner were strewn about, and the Walach boys were curled up under the table, snoring softly, their bellies full of roasted pork and grape leaves stuffed with raisins and nutmeats. A round yellow moon had risen and it peered over the peak of the house. It was bright enough to send the stars hurrying before it.
White-armed Hera smiled, and smiling, took the cup.
Alexandros' voice rose, ringing through the empty halls and rooms of the house.
Dripping nectar sweet, from the mixing bowl she poured it round.
Krista moved quietly in the room that the Prince had chosen for them, her slim white hands gathering up clothes and a comb from the side table.
Laughter broke from the happy gods, watching the god of fire breathing hard.
She twisted the bundle into a carrying roll and bound it round with a long length of cloth.
From that hour and all day long they feasted, and no god hungered or lacked a share.
The straw hat hung down her back, held by the twisted leather plait. She turned at the door, frowning, a wicker basket tucked under one arm.
Gorgeous Apollo struck his lyre, calling the Muses singing, their voice and voice in choir, their vibrant music ringing.
Alexandros' voice faded as she slipped down the hallway, calling softly into each room. She was beginning to sweat, fearing that the Prince or one of the men would come upstairs at any moment.
Sun's fiery light set, each immortal going to rest in his own house, those splendid high halls Hephaestus built in craft and cunning.
There was a clattering sound, and Krista froze, sliding to the nearest wall, her heart hammering. Her hand was tight on a thin knife of iron. Something darted past her feet, small and black as night, skittering on the smooth tile with tiny claws.
So went Olympian Zeus, lord of lightnings, to his bed. There, welcome sleep lay for him.
Krista sprinted down the hallway, her soft-bottomed shoes flashing on the tile, and scooped up the little black cat with a swift jerk. The cat squeaked plaintively as Krista stuffed it headfirst into the wicker basket. She came to a halt-barely daring to breathe-at the top of the stairs down to the garden. She could see Alexandros still standing in the garden, his voice raised to the open sky. Maxian was draining a cup of good red wine. She turned away, her face composed and still.
There he lay, and there he slept and at his side, Hera the Queen, goddess on a golden throne.
Clapping echoed and faint voices rose as Krista slipped out the door into the side yard. Looking up at the moon, she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. The carrying roll was slung over one shoulder, and the basket was tight in her hand. The side yard was empty and desolate in the pearly light of the moon. Without a sound she slipped away along the line of outbuildings, her face in shadow.
– |The rattle of pans in the kitchen woke Maxian. Groaning in pain, he screwed his eyes tight. Bright bars of sunlight were slanting in from the high windows of the sleeping room and falling like hammers on his face. He rolled over, pulling a blanket over his head. Drums rattled and rolled in his head, and he could hear the rush of blood in his ears like a waterfall. A hint of jasmine lay on the pillows.
O brilliant physician, he thought, dreading the hurt of further noise. Heal thyself.
"My lord?" Someone knocked lightly on the wooden frame of the doorway. Maxian flinched at the noise, but threw back the blanket. Gaius Julius was standing in the doorway, his leathery old face hiding a grin. "Did you sleep well?"
Maxian snarled and rolled out of bed. He was wearing a wrinkled tunic and a variety of wine stains. He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling it lie lank and greasy on his scalp. He scratched an itch behind his ear. His eyes felt like they had been used by mollusks for a mating bed.
"Yes, Gaius, what is it?"
"We've unloaded the books and put them in one of the rooms downstairs as a library, but where do you want the thaumaturgic apparatus? Also, will you summon the Engine to us today? There are more things we will need that are stored in its hold."
Maxian put his head in his hands and concentrated. Blue fire seeped from between his fingers and washed over his face for a moment. When he stood up, his stubble was gone and the hangover was a memory. He smiled at the old Roman, his great, good humor of the day before restored. There was a great deal of work to be done, and he was eager to be about it.
"I have an excellent place to put the Engine, my friend."
Deep in discussion with Gaius Julius, the Prince bustled out of the room and clattered down the stairs. A scrap of scraped parchment that had been laid on the pillow by his head was lost in the tangle of blankets.
– |A carruca with white-painted sides and a cover of faded blue cloth rolled slowly north along the Imperial road that followed the line of the coast. Four oxen plodded along in front of it, their driver nodding in the midday heat on the high seat at the front of the vehicle. He was a grizzled fellow, a slave with a white beard and a balding pate. A conical hat of straw was perched on his head, but his shoulders were bare a
nd burned red by the sun. Beside him, exhausted from the long hike down the western slope of the mountain, dozed a young woman with a red wicker basket in her lap. With the steady, even pace of the oxen, they would reach the coastal town of Herculaneum by lunch time. The slave was in no hurry. His cargo of wine tuns wasn't going to spoil if he was a little late, and bouncing it over the graveled road might even ruin the vintage. The patricians who thronged the streets of the port during the summer liked their wine, and it meant a pretty sesterces to his master for the grape to be delivered in full flavor.
Krista clutched the basket to her chest, her eyes slitted against the sun off the ocean. It was bright and muggy. The headache that had nearly driven her to the ground during her nighttime journey down the mountain had begun to ease, receding slowly like the tide on a shallow shore. The amulet burned against her chest, a hot point on her skin. She dared not take it off yet. I will kill the Prince and his servants, she chanted to herself in the safety of her mind. I will ruin his plan.
With each recitation, the headache eased and the flickering black glow that came and went at the edge of her vision faded a little more. She shivered, feeling cold creeping along her bones. Even the hot sun did not drive it out. Only one thing would.
I will kill the Prince. He will fail. He will be destroyed.
The wagon rolled north, great wooden wheels rattling on the road.
I will kill him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Port of Leuke Kome on the Coast of the Hedjaz
Black smoke crawled into the upper air, a curling pillar rising slowly over the town. Mohammed strode down a narrow street, the gravel and stones crunching under his boots. The sun was high, and he was feeling the weariness of the day. The port lay ahead, near the burning buildings that fueled the smoke cloud. The Quraysh chieftain turned as the street ended in a dusty plaza. One and two-story buildings built of pale tan lime-and-sandstone blocks surrounded the square. White plaster covered most of the walls. No one was in evidence, though by this hour the streets should have seen some traffic. A squad of the Sahaba trotted along after him, the iron rings of their armor jingling as they moved. Like all the men in his army, they had put aside the colored braid of their tribes, choosing instead the green and white of the Tanukh. About half of the men carried round shields of wood with iron bosses, adorned with a cheap russet paint. The others bore bows and quivers fashioned of boiled leather, packed with black-fletched arrows, on their backs.
A sloping street led off of the plaza, leading down to the harbor. Mohammed walked stiffly-he had spent too much time on a horse in the past week-and the descent made his thighs and ankles complain. From the vantage of the little hill, he could make out the ships tied up to the stone quays in the harbor and the bulk of the warehouses that lined the bay. Leuke Kome stood on a barren shore, a dozen leagues from anything that bore green leaves or a hint of water. The town existed only because it owned the sole harborage along this long stretch of desolate coastline. Despite that, there were still a dozen ships in the harbor. A hundred and eighty miles to the north, along a long, narrow valley, stood the Nabatean capital of Petra and the road to the great cities along Strata Triana.
Leuke Kome had served as an entrepot for the Petran trade in silk, cotton, perfume, rare spices, steel ingots, poppy paste, and gems for eight hundred years. Its wealth, its whole reason for being, lay in the safe harbor and the stone warehouses that rose two and three stories tall behind the road that ran along the piers. Most of the black smoke was billowing from the windows of one of those warehouses.
Mohammed's face was storm-cloud dark with anger. A faint breeze was blowing up from the sea, carrying a sharp smell and bending the pillars of smoke inland. Ten years spent in the trade, traveling the length and breadth of Arabia and beyond, even to India and the glorious, decadent cities of the Empire, had not been lost on him. He knew many spices, fabrics, and woods by taste and smell.
The Quraysh chieftain and his bodyguards reached the bayside road and turned. Other bands of Sahaba soldiers were beginning to gather as they finished their sweep through the town. When the sun had risen, hours ago, the port had still been in Imperial hands. Now it was Mohammed's possession, and he was furious that a quarter or more of its worth to him was being consumed as he watched. One of the Sahaba guardsmen coughed, catching a whiff of the sting in the air. Mohammed raised his riding scarf over his mouth and nose. Burning pepper let off a dangerous humor.
Mohammed had thought to leave Mekkah in secret, accompanied by only a few of his companions. The Tanukh, he knew, had sworn themselves to his service. Those bonds, forged in the battle furnace of Palmyra, would endure until his death or theirs. The men of the city, even his kinsmen, he had not expected to follow. Even after the capture of Yathrib and the extirpation of the Bani-Hashim and their allies, it had not occurred to the Quraysh chieftain that he had become the ruler of a people.
The Mekkan clans had fought and feuded and spilt each other's blood for centuries, and Mohammed had not thought to change them. He had sought to take the blood-price from the murderers who had left his child dead in his arms. He had hoped to crush the resistance to his adopted house and secure the patrimony of his children. In that, the promulgation of a common law for the people of both cities had been his aim. The friendship of the Ben-Sarid and the obedience of the Quraysh had been a welcome surprise. He had not told Jalal or Shadin about his dreams or the full truth of what the voice had said on the mountaintop, but they had followed him forth from the city nonetheless.
They had ridden out before dawn, in full darkness, finding the road only by the faint light of a crescent moon. Even then Mohammed had been wrapped in thought, listening to the echoes of the voice from the air. He had not noticed that the ranks of the Tanukh had swollen as they had ridden north. The appearance of Uri and his Ben-Sarid horsemen had seemed natural, for the Sarid had fought at their side at Yathrib.
Then dawn was almost upon them, and Mohammed had stopped. He knew that the Lord of the Seven Heavens had chosen him to undertake a dreadful task in the world. That thought filled his heart with a sense of rightness that had always eluded him. That emptiness in his soul, that yearning to find something to set his shoulder to, some task worthy of his full devotion, had driven him out from his house and across the face of the world. Now it was filled, and he knew that thanks were owed.
So, with the sun preparing to crawl over the jagged peaks and desolate mountains to the east of Mekkah, he had reined in his horse and dismounted. Without looking up, he had unrolled a blanket from the saddle of his mare and knelt on the gritty sand. Even though the white fire that had filled him that day before Ka'ba was gone, there was never a moment when he did not feel the distant voice of the stone. He knelt on the blanket and bowed toward the southeast, toward the sacred precincts.
Make your place of worship free of ornament and distraction, the voice had said from the clear air. How can you come to know the mind of the merciful and compassionate god if your eye is assailed by graven images and your ear by the importuning of priests?
Mohammed did not bow down before the Black Stone or the ancient house; he knelt before the Lord of the Wasteland that was in everything he could see or touch. The priests of the temples that his men had torn down had not understood that. In time they would.
When he stood he brushed the sand from the blanket and rolled it up. As he did so there was a susurration in the cool morning air, a rustling and a muted, clinking sound. He looked about, puzzled, and stopped in surprise, the blanket half folded.
Ten thousand men were rising as well all around him. The road behind the clot of Tanukh was clogged with horses and camels and pack mules. Tribal banners and flags fluttered in the air, lending the army a festive air. Men of every tribe in the city, and some he had never seen before, were rolling up their own blankets or swinging back into the saddle. Mohammed raised an eyebrow and turned to find Jalal standing at his side, fists resting on the top of his curved bow. Shadin and
Khalid were already seated on their horses, long kaffiyeh trailing in the dawn breeze.
"Who are these?" Mohammed gestured toward the columns of men and the thickets of lances, sparkling in the light of the rising sun. Jalal smiled, his grim, scarred features cracking like a stone splitting under the stroke of a chisel.
"Men who would follow you wherever you may lead them, my lord."
And so they had ridden forth from Mekkah with an army, and made their way into the wastelands of the north, into the barren desolation of the Hedjaz.
– |A timber, burned through by the inferno raging inside the pepper warehouse, cracked like a sling-bullet against a shield. Part of the roof of the building fell in with a roar, sending sparks and a plume of thick black smoke roiling up. Waves of heat beat against Mohammed's face, and he took a dozen steps back. That left him at the edge of the stone pier, his hand on a stumpy round piling. The inside of the warehouse was a raging red heart as the close-packed barrels of pepper and marjoram burned. Mohammed felt the heat like a blow to his heart-the contents of such a warehouse were worth a thousand times their weight in gold on the trading tables of Constantinople or Rome or Saguntum. Any kind of spice-pepper was most highly prized-was easy to ship and carry and in vast demand. The Roman fondness for hot spices was legendary across the length and breadth of the world. The craving had made Palmyra and Petra rich. It had made Khadijah and the House of Khuwaylid wealthy, too.
"How did this happen?" Mohammed's voice rasped with repressed anger. To him the contents of these warehouses meant even more than they had to his dead wife or the Palmyrenes. Every ounce of spice that whirled away into the sky or fell as a fine ash over the town meant fewer sheaves of arrows, fewer suits of armored mail, fewer swords and lances and spears for his army.
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