Shards of Empire

by Susan Shwartz

  “You have to go up over that ridge before you get into the center of the place,” Ioannes reminded Leo.

  He nodded. From here, he could see no bodies, whether monks or servants or their attackers. That meant nothing, least of all that it would be safe to take the usual path downward.

  He gestured at it.

  “What do you think?” he asked Kemal.

  The gulam shrugged. “I couldn't be sure of a straight shot,” he said. “If it were me, and my fate drove me to clamber down there, it might be safe to try. Or, it might not; and you'd die cleaner simply hurling yourself off the rock, here.”

  Leo grimaced. Driven as he was by a compulsion with the force of prophecy to find the old priest, he found Kemal's fatalism aggravating, to say the least.

  “Would you try?” he asked.

  Again, the shrug. “Why not?”

  Reckless to a fault and more than a bit of a fool, his Kemal. It explained why he now served a Byzantine rather than reclining at his ease, enjoying an emperor's ransom, in Persia.

  It was folly, too, for Leo to descend into the valley. His men looked to him. Doctrine and his own conscience told him: you have no right to abandon them. The people who loved him had set him free to do as he saw best. In doing so, they had risked their hearts and lives on his judgment, had become hostage to it where now they crouched deep below the earth. It was folly to have trusted him, to have trusted anyone so utterly—as he too had done.

  Before God, Leo thought, they must all be fools.

  One last time, he leaned out, marking the path he would take downward. There was no Theodoulos to urge him forward, hastening despite his lame leg. There was no Father Meletios to heal his spirit. There was only the compulsion upon him to descend.

  He would need both hands for the climb down. Still, he loosened his sword in its sheath and made certain that he could quickly reach the other weapons he wore. Despite the boiled-leather harness he wore, his back ached as if in imminent expectation of an arrow fleshing itself between his shoulderblades.

  He began the descent. The others, at a safe distance either from attack or from what they must consider madness, left their fears on the lip of the cliff and descended after him.

  Already, the day's heat had brought the reek of a battlefield to what Leo remembered as a sanctuary. As Leo descended, he could see thick, greasy smoke mounting above the ridge that divided the inner from the outer valley. The river ran brown and clean, but blood splashed the rocks that served as a bridge. That trail ended in the body lying half in, half out of the water, washed as clean of sins as of blood.

  Ashamed of his relief at not being able to see the monk's face, Leo bent and lifted him out of the water, turning him over to look into the pale face. It was not a face he knew. Death had drained the pain and terror from it. Leo closed its eyes, composed the dead man's limbs upon the warm grass, murmured a prayer for the dead man's soul, and went on.

  The battlefield reek grew stronger as Leo neared the cluster of shrines and cells that lay at the valley's heart. Fire blackened the entry to some of the caves. Flies buzzed nearby and above the tumbles of coarse brown and black homespun, quilled with arrows, the unsightly awkward feet halted forever in their flight.

  Leo drew his sword as they headed upslope to Father Meletios’ cave. He had never expected to draw a weapon in a shrine. Coming here for the first time as a madman and penitent, he had been dumbstruck by the light that poured from the holy man's cave. Blind himself, he had affixed a kind of mirror to the rock wall to provide light for his sighted visitors. But now, no blade of light parried Leo's sword. The mirror had been cast down. The polished metal lay dented on the rough floor, together with shards of broken pottery. Someone had trampled on the statue Leo had admired upon his first visit: he grimaced at the sight of its mutilated body. Such a foolish thing to care about with so many good men killed.

  Where was Meletios? Leo had expected to find him crumpled on his pallet or before his icon.

  Leo emerged from the cave, waving his arms to signal: no one here! A few butterflies erupted from a bush that had been grubbed only partially up by its roots. The bush, at least, would heal.

  He could see hope light his men's faces. Perhaps not all the monks had been slain. Perhaps, survivors would creep out of hiding to help the soldiers bury the dead and pray for them.

  The butterflies hovered, then flew upslope toward the church to which Meletios had led Leo on that first visit.

  Then Leo heard the hopeless weeping issuing from the darkness.

  He shuddered, or the ground trembled: he could not tell which. He pointed at the cave chapel and started toward it. In the rough-cut narthex Leo paused, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dark before he entered. He knew he should not bear arms into a church. There were other things that should not be done there. Judging from the evidence of Leo's eyes and nose, he thought the Turkmen had done all of them. The pictures of tall, formidable ladies in their red and ochre robes had already been defaced. Now they endured further indignity, illiterate obscenities that made Leo grit his teeth. The reek of urine rose from a puddle in a corner. Stone benches had been hacked in a vain attempt to knock them over.

  And the weeping, which had drawn Leo, ended in a stifled sob.

  Leo thought it came from the direction of the altar. It too had been hacked about, but he was glad to see it had not been desecrated. Then, he saw the hardening pool on which dust had already settled, darkening at the edges.

  “Kyrie eleison,” he said. How many men had died here?

  “Christe eleison.” The response came from behind the altar, very faint and broken by a gasp.

  “Father Meletios!” Two long strides brought Leo to where the old man lay. One hand touched the altar-stone. The other pressed down on a wound in his breast. Meletios was almost corpse-pale. Bled out. Bled white, despite his long-ago desert weathering.

  From the shadows of the apse, presided over by the fierce Theotokos Leo remembered, Theodoulos forced himself to unsteady feet. He smeared a filthy hand across his eyes and nose.

  “Nordbriht told me,” Leo said. He was down on both knees, fumbling in his pouch for soft cloths, for all the good that would do. No care on earth could staunch that wound, and if God couldn't spare a miracle for Father Meletios, mankind was totally out of them.

  Meletios lifted his hand free of the altar. “God sent you, my son. His last mercy to me. I cannot die with this undone ... unguarded ... no one to come after me. No one to restrain her.”

  “Her?” Leo whispered.

  “What lies below,” Meletios replied. “I drove out the sisters. Oh, I knew, though they lived as nuns, that they only waited to do her will. I tried to blot her face from the walls—and from my sight, but...”

  Meletios tried to rise, shaking with pain and urgency. “Can't you feel it? She rises!” Leo tried to press him back down.

  Theodoulos’ eyes gleamed, immense in his smeared face. More than ever, he looked like a boy—no, a young man—of the very oldest race to dwell here. Leo gestured over his shoulder for Ioannes to see to his friend, who watched the dying monk with horror.

  “Whatever it is, lay the burden down,” Leo leaned forward. “I'm here now.”

  “You ... you do not reject...” Again, the trembling hand came up, trying to compel Leo's belief.

  “I tell you, I will see to it.”

  Meletios smiled and yawned. Bleeding to death could be a sleepy death. Leo half-lifted the bloody hand that had tried to staunch the chest wound, but gave up the attempt at Meletios’ convulsive start. Even the glance he got at it told him that the holy man's case was hopeless.

  And that was precisely what it should not have been. Meletios’ teeth were chattering, his blind eyes distended. Mortally wounded he was, to be sure. Still, a holy man, sure of heaven, should not die in mortal fear.

  And he would die soon, too, drifting away on the tide of his own bloodless. How much time could he have left? Surely, the Turkmen would not re
turn to put them all to fire and sword if they knelt and said a simple prayer for the good old man's soul. Leo clasped his hand.

  “No! No time!” Meletios interrupted. “You have to go back, protect ... protect.”

  He had just welcomed Leo, told him that God had sent him.

  “They can spare the time to say a few prayers,” Leo told him. “I will not leave you this way.”

  “I cannot be moved.”

  Leo shook his head, then remembered that Meletios was blind. “You never could.”

  “We...” another jaw-cracking yawn, a foreshadowing of death's rictus..."have been comrades, soldiers in this war.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then give me ... what any injured comrade might ask. Don't leave me ... not for them. The mercy-stroke, son of mine. Do it.”

  “How can you ask me to kill you?” Leo demanded. Meletios was a holy man. He had healed him, had wed him to Asherah.

  “You cannot leave me in the dark,” Meletios begged him. “Not like this. Not...” He tried to raise himself up on his elbow, so frenzied Leo knew that terror would kill him in a few moments.

  “Easy there. Steady,” whispered Leo.

  “Sir,” called a man stationed at the entrance to the cluster of caves. “Up above ... the guard is waving. Horses! They're coming, and they're not ours.”

  Leo gestured his men into hiding.

  “You must flee now...”

  “God have mercy,” Leo murmured.

  “I absolve you of my blood, son. Now ... quickly.” Leo groped for his sword. Meletios, who had braced himself for the blow, raised a hand at the sound of the blade, freed from its scabbard.

  “I ... have not lived by the sword, and I ... I refuse to perish by it. Use ... the little knife, the black stone you told me of.”

  Leo sighed deeply and laid his sword aside. He drew the tiny knife. “Bless me, father,” he begged. He blinked his eyes free of tears lest his aim fall awry and the old man die in more pain.

  “Blessings ... now ... to you and the way below. Below!” He braced one hand against the altar once more and raised his chin.

  Leo struck. Blood flowed over his hand and the black knife, soaking in an instant into the altar. Meletios’ hand jerked convulsively against the altar. To Leo's astonishment, it toppled. Leo caught a glimpse of a rough sarcophagus, incised with a girlchild's remote, delicate face.

  Behind him, Theodoulos sobbed aloud. “The Sisters always said she was my sister. And now I am about to join her.”

  Ioannes hugged the other lad against him. “They'll hear you, they'll hear,” he warned.

  “So will they ... below,” said Meletios’ servant.

  A whistle sounded from outside. The Turks must be very close indeed. Anger flashed through Leo, and he felt stronger than he had for weeks. Surely, he had not come all this fruitless way just to kill a priest, then be slaughtered on his body!

  He glared up at the defaced Theotokos on the wall. What remained of her eyes glared back at him, drawing his eyes. Beneath her, snakes, leopards ... just like the paintings he had seen far below the surface of the earth near where the caves were walled off from—what had the nun called it?

  Sister Xenia had called that path “the way below.” So a branch of it led here? The nuns had known of it and guarded it. And then Meletios had driven them out and settled down to guard it in their stead. All these years they had known. Yet Meletios had died in fear. What did lie below the earth, and why was the entry hidden in this shrine?

  “Get Theodoulos over here,” Leo ordered Ioannes. “Quickly!”

  “What is this ‘way below'?” Leo grasped the boy by his shoulders. “If there is a bolthole from this place, show it to us so we don't all die like rats in a trap.”

  And, when Theodoulos hesitated, Leo snapped. “You heard him. He willed it to me. Show me. Now.”

  Theodoulos stumbled forward. Terror and grief made him more awkward than Leo had ever seen him, and he had to harden his heart against the sight. He thrust forward with the boy's crutch. It wedged in one of the blocks that underlay the fallen altar. He leaned his weight upon it and wrested it up ... up ... he was weakening; the stone would fall back; the Turks were coming—Leo hurled himself forward and thrust his shoulder beneath the stone. A draft of air struck him in the face, cooling the blood that had washed him.

  Though the pounding of the blood in his heart and temples nearly drowned them out, he could hear footsteps, almost as awkward in their way as Theodoulos. Kemal never walked if he could ride.

  The Seljuk raced into the church, ignoring the unfamiliar surroundings and the filth. “Turkmen, lord. I recognize the standard. Probably coming to see if anything's left.”

  Leo glanced frantically about the church for answers. They came as his eyes met the half-blinded visage of the woman painted on the wall. With one hand she held her Child. The other pointed downward. To the way below.

  “Quick,” Leo gasped. “Get the men into the cave. Theo, do you keep torches down there?”

  Their lives might depend on his answer unless they burnt every scrap they wore.

  “He made me ... made me see to it.”

  “Down!” Leo ordered.

  Into the pit. The men paused.

  “Come on! The holy father tended it. You think he'd send you down to hell?”

  A small farmer from outside Hagios Prokopios knelt. “He might be guarding its gate. Protecting us from the demons below.”

  “How's this cave any different from where your wife—and mine—took sanctuary? Who knows? Maybe we'll meet up with them. Now,” Leo rose and took a step forward. “In, or so help me, I'll send you to the gates of hell myself!”

  And God forgive me for saying so.

  At Leo's gesture, Theodoulos led the way. “By the time I get down there, I want a torch lit!” Leo ordered.

  He shut his eyes. He could feel footsteps in Meletios’ valley—which was now his. Alien footsteps, confident of any prey that remained. And beneath him, fear and temptation. Was this the terror Meletios had felt? Or another of Leo's own hauntings? If he didn't hurry, his blood would drown it. His heart swelled, demanding life, more life. He had promised Asherah to return to her. But one man had to remain outside and close the passage.

  The last man except for Ioannes and Kemal made it into the pit. There had to be a way out. There had to. Why else set a priest to guard this?

  “Quick,” Leo pointed to the passageway. “Ioannes, you're next. Then you, Kemal.”

  “You can't leave the rock like that,” Kemal gestured at the hole beneath the altar. “They'll see the good old man down there, decide he was guarding treasure, and follow you.”

  “Right. I have to rejoin the troop anyhow,” Leo said. “So I'll tip the rock back over and take my chances. It worked for you, after all. When you surface—make that ‘when’ and not ‘if,'—look for me.”

  “Sir...”

  Leo gestured with the point of his sword at Ioannes.

  “Now, you...”

  Had the Turk gone mad? He stripped off his tunic, tore his other clothing, then slashed his own flesh as if in the barbarous mourning of the steppes. He smeared blood over his face and chest, and grinned at Leo like something from the Pit.

  “I'm the poor foolish gulam, remember? Pissed away an emperor's ransom, and never had a day's luck after. So stupid that even monks can knock me on the head. And when I wake up, they're gone. I'm no kin of theirs. They even stole my horse, I'll say. Now, get moving.”

  He laughed at the look on Ioannes’ face.

  “You gave me life, lad, like the master there. He took me in. Now he doesn't stand a chance. You don't stand a chance. But I do. If it is written, we shall meet again. And do you think I won't like gulling those...” he trailed off into his native tongue. “How I'll laugh at that, even if the Turkmen do tie me to their horses and whip them to the four corners of the earth!”

  Leo started forward to plead with Kemal. “Friend,” he began.

  T
he Turk gestured. “Move!” he snarled. “Does it take a vow of silence to keep you Christians quiet?”

  Leo raised his arms, then felt them seized. Ioannes, you Judas!

  “Forgive me, prince,” said Kemal. “But even a fool of a gulam knows you cannot be spared. Speak to your sons of me.”

  White light and red pain exploded in Leo's skull, and he fell forward into the pit.

  Leo flinched from an explosion of red-gold and hot above his head. One of the familiar sick headaches he had suffered after Manzikert pounded in his skull.

  A young voice, self-consciously brave and dignified, caught his attention.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...”

  Carefully, Leo turned his head. He really thought he might live now.

  He attended to the words of the psalm. Even Ioannes knelt, listening to Theodoulos pray. The sobs were gone from his voice. So was its youthful reediness; and that, no less than all the others, was a loss. Fire-shadows washed over them all and danced on the walls.

  All of the figures depicted upon them had their eyes scratched out. If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.

  Leo shut his eyes once more. Meletios had been a blind guardian of the underground ways. What did they contain that he feared to see, so that he had ordered the faces of the women—the goddesses—on the walls to be scratched out? That is, if they had not been scratched out earlier by someone equally orthodox, equally fearful, and equally blind.

  His head spun. If he moved, he would spew out anything in his stomach. The air was warm. His men were safe. His wife was safe in hiding. God grant Kemal proved more clever than he had boasted.

  The warm air took on a spicy scent. He and Asherah entered the maze, the first—what? trespassers? worshippers?—to do so for God knows how long. The air turned warm and spicy. His mouth grew dry with longing, and he had turned to her and seen the same desire in her eyes. The caves had brought him new life.

  A saint like his namesake, Meletios was—almost. But saints could cast out fear, and Meletios had feared this way so much that he had died rather than escape into it. Years ago, he had even sacrificed his sight lest he see and be tempted. By what?