The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  Abdmachus sighed, his voice faint with pain and exhaustion. "Dastagird is the stronghold of the magi. It lies along the banks of the great river Tigris, barely twenty miles north of the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. It is a closed city, entered only by the mobehedan and their servants. Once, when I was very young, I was taken there to be initiated into the order, but all I remember are towering buildings of black basalt and green soapstone."

  "Ctesiphon..." Maxian stood up and motioned for Gaius Julius and Krista to bring blankets and quilts for the old man. "Still very far away. We must make haste." He scowled. "Curse this war of my brothers! If there were peace upon the land, we could travel swiftly." He began muttering to himself.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  The Hills Above Samosata

  "Left!" shouted Eric, ducking away from a spinning disk of blue fire.

  The disk caromed off the rocks on the hillside and crashed into a scrubby tree. The juniper burst into flame, throwing long flickering shadows across the twilight-shrouded hill. Dwyrin, following the other boy's lead, weaved uphill between the boulders. His right hand tugged at the air and the juniper roared higher, burning to a white ash in moments. Fire, curling into spheres, darted away from the skeleton of the tree and hurtled downhill at the half-seen figures of the other cohort.

  White light vomited up, briefly outlining a sphere of glittering green. Dwyrin felt a shock through the working he had sent out and stumbled against the crumbly stones. Eric halted, his young face drawn in concentration. The Hibernian clutched at the sharp-edged rocks, feeling blood ooze from his fingertips. With the pain came focus, and he could suddenly see the jagged byplay of powers that rippled and strobed in the air over the hill. Downslope, three separate groups of lights moved, darting from stone to stone. As one group moved, another laced the air above them with invisible lightning. Jagged white tendrils leapt from rock to rock, covering the advance.

  Eric staggered, his shield taking the side blast of one burst. Dwyrin gulped, remembering that he was supposed to be covering too. Furiously he tried to calm his mind and add his own intent and will to the ragged, incomplete shield that the Northerner was sketching between them and the onrushing attackers. It seemed agonizingly slow work, not like drawing power from the flame of the tree. Bit by bit the Shield of Athena wavered into being between him and the men scrambling through the field of volcanic debris.

  Another flare of light lit the sky, and a twisted flute of spongy black rock blew apart not fifteen feet from them. A cloud of fragments scythed out, smashing the delicate web of the shield Eric had thrown up. Dwyrin gasped in pain, feeling a sliver of rock slash across his cheek. He leapt forward in front of Eric, arm thrown up, and the hail of stones suddenly crashed to a halt against a shimmering wall of fire. Bits of broken rock rained down, smoking and bubbling, to clatter on the ground.

  "Up! Up!" He dragged at Eric's arm, throwing it over his shoulder. The other boy was bleeding from cuts on his face and arms. Dwyrin jogged forward with the Northerner stumbling behind. The air hummed with power. More tiny stones pattered down out of the darkening sky. They had been about these exercises, as Blanco was fond of terming them, since the sun had risen over the grimy, fly-infested plain. North of the camp, a long low row of hills rose up. They were only barely covered with scrub and cactus and spindly trees. The stones and rocks were crumbly and porous. Some you could crush into dust with your bare hand. Others cut like flint, showing deep-green colors in their serrated surfaces. They were an evil place.

  The tribune, then, was fond of sending his troopers out to exercise their powers among them. Today, starting with the dawn, Zoë's four had been sent out as prey for the journeymen in the other cohorts. It had been a long drawn-out affair. The four youngsters had flitted among the dry washes and narrow, boulder-choked canyons for hours. At Zoë's order, they had damped their powers down to a mute whisper. Zoë and Odenathus were at home among the spiny plants and sandy drainages, flitting invisibly from draw to draw. Eric had suffered in the heat, and Dwyrin had not done so well himself. The air itself drained them, hot and dry. Still, thanks to Zoë, they had eluded capture for a long time.

  Now they had run out of places to run. The night air trembled with a dull rumbling.

  Dwyrin pushed Eric ahead of him, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand up. They staggered down a gravelly slope, their feet slipping and sliding. Pale ghost images followed the movement of their pumping arms and legs. Dwyrin's ears hurt. The sky lit with blue-green fire.

  —|—

  "Let's take a walk."

  Dwyrin rolled over on his bunk, his stomach seething with a horrible burning feeling. Zoë stood over him, her dark hair falling over her shoulder in an open-weave pattern. He squinted at the coarse canvas wall of the tent, feeling bile at the back of his throat. The leader of their four had a grim look on her face, enhanced by the bandage tied with twine to the side of her temple. Groaning inwardly, the Hibernian tried to roll back over, his forearm thrown across his face.

  Zoë hissed in anger and rapped his knees sharply with the short wooden baton she carried as part of her equipment. Dwyrin flinched and turned over, coming up onto his feet. Zoë stared up at him with her head a few inches below his own.

  "We walk, barbarian, and we talk." She pushed him ahead of her out of the tent. Behind them, Eric continued to snore, his arms swathed in gauze bandages soaked in honey.

  The camp was busy. The sun was well set over the curve of the world and the heat of day was past. A cool dimness lay over the long rows of tents, and nightjars and bats filled the air, feasting on the swarms of insects that thronged around the lanterns hung from tall poles along the beaten dirt avenues. With the deadening heat gone, everyone was out and about. Voices filled the air. The streets were filled with men coming and going. From the far end of camp, there was a sound of drums and flutes coming from the encampments of the auxillia.

  Zoë walked quickly uphill from the tents that the thaumaturges maintained. A low hill butted against one end of the camp, surmounted by a watchtower of fieldstone and wooden uprights. Dwyrin walked behind her, his mood sullen, dragging his feet. At the tower, there was a gate of wooden slats. Zoë nodded to the trooper standing watch. He unlatched the gate and she slipped out. Dwyrin swallowed and followed after her.

  The hill was rounded and covered with scattered rocks and thorny bushes. The Palmyrene girl wound her way down the far side, far enough to escape the light leaking from the camp, but not so far as to be beyond sight of the top of the tower. She found an outcropping of stone and sat down. Dwyrin remained standing, staring off into the darkness, his hands clasped behind his back. Zoë sighed and leaned back on her hands, looking up at the dark sky. It was filled with eddies of stars, a scattering of twinkling jewels. The night air was cool and clean against her face.

  "You trouble me, MacDonald." Her voice was clear and level. Dwyrin flushed.

  "You're strong—as strong as Odenathus or I, yet you haven't the control of a first-year apprentice. You're quick, but quick to make a godless mess. You can summon fire from dead stone, but you take an age to draw the simplest ward. Never have I seen someone work so hard at this and fail so miserably to master their craft."

  Dwyrin stumbled a little at the biting tone in the girl's voice, and then he sat down too.

  "In single combat, you can give the journeymen and even some masters a run for their money—but fighting in a five, as we must if we are to survive on the field of battle—you're a menace or worse. You and Eric were dead a dozen times today—all because you cannot seem to get the concept of teamwork through your fat barbarian head."

  Zoë paused, pursing her lips and then letting out a slow breath. There was a tick-tick sound on the rocks as she absently drummed her baton against the stone. "Centurion Blanco asked me today, after the tribune was finished grinding my head off with a mill wheel, if I wanted to send you to another five. Some capricious god must have stolen my thought, because I told him that I would take care
of the problem."

  Dwyrin shivered, feeling the smooth cold surface of the baton come to rest on his neck.

  Zoë leaned close. He could feel her breath on his forehead. "You're a donkey, MacDonald, fit only for simple tasks. But by Hecate, you are my donkey and I will see how much weight you can carry. You will learn to fight with us. You will learn to be effective. If not, then I will dispose of you myself. Do you understand me?"

  Dwyrin nodded, then felt her move away in the darkness. The sound of her sandals crunching on the soil and gravel of the slope stayed with him for a time. He stayed on the rock, feeling the night close around him. Tears dripped down his face and he fought back a sniffle. He was sixteen years old, old enough to take this. Stars wheeled overhead, full and bright in the clear desert air.

  —|—

  A wagon wheel trembled in the air. Unsupported, it wavered back and forth in the clear space in front of the cohort tents. Dwyrin and Eric stood on either side of the wooden disk, their eyes closed. Sweat was streaming down the Hibernian's face, matting his thin tunic against his chest. Eric was not doing much better; his chubby fists were clenched hard at his sides and he was breathing heavily. The wheel rose up another three handspans, then began to rotate drunkenly. Dwyrin felt the heavy wood and iron slipping from his mental grasp. He bit his lip, putting forth his will, trying to stabilize the disk.

  It swung back toward him as he took on the weight of it himself. Eric staggered forward, one hand rising. The wheel suddenly sped up and whipped through the air at Dwyrin's head as the Northerner lost control of it.

  Dwyrin cried out, seeing the wheel spin at him, and pushed back hard, trying to keep it from him. The wheel reversed course, flipping over in midair, and shot back across the little square. Eric leapt aside, arms windmilling and his eyes wide in fear. The wheel tore through the row of tents behind him with a ripping sound and smashed into the wagon's side. Dwyrin sat down heavily, sweating, and buried his face in his hands. He was trembling.

  "So," said a grim voice from above him. "No luck with the wheel exercise either."

  Dwyrin scrambled to his feet and stood up, facing the centurion. For a change, Blanco did not have an expression of furious anger fixed on his face. Instead, there was a resigned look tinged with something close to pity. Zoë stood behind the centurion, her head barely coming to her shoulder. Her eyes were very grim, and her face was drawn. Dwyrin swallowed but said nothing.

  "Lad, you've got to learn to work with another sorcerer." Blanco's voice was even. He motioned to the wrecked tents and the soldiers peering out of them in alarm.

  "This exercise is simple, very simple, not much more than doing the weave. Just lift it up together and make it spin. It's a wheel, for Mithra's sake, it wants to spin."

  "The, ah, the weave, sir?" Dwyrin felt like his head had been clubbed with a hammer.

  "Yes, MacDonald, the weave—you know, like in school?"

  Blanco stopped, his eyes narrowing, watching the incomprehension on the boy's face.

  "Like, say"—he paused, searching for the right word—"like platting the twishers. Is that what they call it in your homeland? Or—ah, what do they call the weave in Palmyra, Zoë?"

  "The weave, sir. Just the weave." Zoë's voice was clipped and biting. She was not pleased.

  "I don't know, sir, I've never heard of that." Dwyrin felt a little light-headed.

  Blanco leaned close, taking a good look at his newest recruit for the first time. He realized that he had been lax, leaving the newest sorcerers to their five-leaders. He had seen the Hibernian boy for weeks now but had never taken the time to find out the boy's background or any details of his life at all. The centurion pulled at his ear, scratching at a scar that ran along it. Considering the boy now, he seemed younger than he had first thought. He hadn't even reached his full growth yet. He was muscular in a wiry sort of way, but he still carried a little baby fat. Blanco put his heavy fists on his hips. He had seemed a troublemaker when he first showed up, what with losing his horse and all, but...

  "Tell me about your schooling, MacDonald. Which school, which master, everything about it. Which circle have you reached, what techniques did they teach you?"

  Dwyrin gave him a sickly grin. No one had asked him anything about how he came to be in the Legion. They had just accepted his appearance and put him to work. Now, faced with the prospect of being turned out, he realized that he wanted very much to succeed here, to earn the respect of Eric and Odenathus, even Zoë. He squared his shoulders unconsciously and summoned the courage to look the centurion straight in the eye.

  "Well, sir, a witch-hunter found me when I was eight years old..."

  —|—

  Blanco sat down heavily in his folding camp chair. He was a thickset man, with beefy thighs and arms like tree roots, so the bronze and wood chair squeaked alarmingly under his weight. The waxed cloth roof of the tent admitted a pale fraction of the sun beating down outside, but Zoë could see the other chair. She sat down too, though her weight did not test the fabric of the camp chair. The centurion's face was closed and she could not read his thought in his eyes.

  He seemed to be looking very far away. While she waited, Zoë tried hard not to fidget. She had a terrible desire to start twirling the loose end of her hair around her finger. Despite this, she remained seated, her hands on her dark-brown thighs, waiting.

  After nearly an hour, Blanco blinked and moved a little in his chair. He scratched the stubble on his chin and opened a wooden trunk at the base of his bed. He pulled a heavy skin out and uncorked it. Two battered tin cups followed, which he placed on the little map table, and he poured a measure of watery red liquid into each one. After stowing the skin, he downed one cup.

  "Have a drink," he said, pushing the other toward her with a thick fingertip.

  Zoë grimaced and downed the shot of flavored vinegar in one gulp. Her throat stung at the passage of the tart liquid. She put the cup back on the table. "Thank you, sir."

  Blanco made a humph sound at that.

  "So," he said, "what are you going to do with your troublesome recruit now?"

  Zoë shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. We'll have to start all over with him, I suppose. He hasn't received half the basic skills I thought he had—he hasn't even been exposed to things that the rest of us take for granted." She sighed, picking the cup back up and turning it over.

  "It seems more than a little cruel to send him to the levy without any skills. I wouldn't have expected it of one of the Egyptian schools—they pride themselves on taking good care of their students."

  Blanco nodded. "It could be worse—he could be missing a hand or an arm or even a thumb. Then, of course, we'd have had to take two of him... I think, five-leader, that the schoolmaster did send him to us to protect the rest of the students—the good ones, or the ones who are paying a pretty aureus to be trained in whatever fraction of the Skill they have. They thought they could spare this one."

  "I suppose—he's just a kid, though! I shouldn't have been so hard on him."

  Blanco laughed, saying, "Happens all the time, five-leader, so get used to it. The question now is what are you going to do with him?"

  Zoë looked up, meeting the centurion's eyes. She didn't know what to do, and she was loath to admit that to her superior officer. After a tiny struggle, she shook her head. "I don't know. Have Eric work with him through the basics and hope that he won't be such a liability if we get into a fight."

  "Why Eric?" Blanco squinted at her, his thin eyebrows crawling together over his nose.

  Zoë looked back in confusion. "They're already a pair. Why should I break them up?"

  "Because," Blanco said slowly, "Eric isn't a very good teacher. He's the second weakest of your five. He's the second most inexperienced... You should pair Dwyrin with your best thaumaturge. That way he'll learn faster and his weaknesses won't be so exposed."

  Zoë grimaced. She had considered that and immediately rejected the idea. She and Odenathus were too good a
team to break up.

  "I can't spare Odenathus," she said, "we're comfortable together—we're close to feeling how the other thinks!"

  Blanco guffawed. "Ha! I wasn't thinking of Odenathus—you need to take the Hibernian under your wing. Odenathus and Eric are like brothers already—they won't have any trouble meshing up. You're the five-leader, you take the responsibility and the work."

  The centurion's voice was firm. Zoë knew that he had already made a decision and it was an order.

  Eew! she thought. Hours of tutoring the barbarian... he smells!

  "Yes, centurion," she said meekly.

  You'll pay for this, MacDonald, she thought.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The Palace of Birds, Ctesiphon

  "The Great King comes! All bow before the Shahanshah of all Persia!"

  Trumpets pealed, sending echoes fluttering down the vast hall that marked the center of the Imperial palace. There was a rustling like the wind over the sea as two thousand attendants, ambassadors, and noble lords knelt along the sides of the chamber. Long stripes of sunlight, falling through the windows set high above the floor, banded the multitude. The crowd was a gleaming mass of gold, red silk, brilliant azure feathers, and rich brocades. At the end of the hall a high seat rose on a pyramid of enameled bricks. The seat had a high back of lustrous pearl and a thick cushion of dark-purple velvet. Above it, suspended by silvered chains, was a heavy gold crown, set with pearl and emerald and Indian ruby.

  On the second step of the four-stepped pyramid that housed the Peacock Throne, Kavadh-Siroes knelt as well. It was difficult, in the stiff brocade and heavy silk robes, but he managed. He did not like the ceremony that insulated his father, but there was little hope of changing it. The King of Kings loved the ceremonies and rituals like a child with a new toy. Anything that enhanced his glory and majesty pleased him.