A mournful groan rumbled across the chamber while the priestess Perenna stood her ground in fierce feral belligerence. A defensive stoop descended upon her posture as her eyes blazed from behind their mask of ashen pallor.
"What blood, Perenna? Whose blood? The youth Antinous?" Suetonius called in an increasingly pained voice.
The priestess raised the jar high and hurled it bodily across the space towards him. The urn flicked splashes of wine-colored, viscous slush as it hurtled downwards and crashed to the flagstones at Suetonius's feet. Its terracotta shell fractured into a dozen shards as its contents splayed-out across the granite. Once again a ripely-sour stench exuded through the sanctuary.
Titianus raised a slight finger gesture to Tribune Macedo. The Praetorian commander nodded to his cohort nearby. The guards stepped forward and positioned themselves around the priestess.
"Whose blood, Perenna?" Suetonius repeated. "Whose is it?"
The priestess struggled and hissed vehemently at all around her but spoke no words. Julianus called aloud to his lictors. One delivered some objects which had been concealed out of sight. They were a bronze basin stained with a dark-colored dry scale, and a similarly stained bronze surgeon's scalpel. He held them before him to display to all.
"These were lying behind a curtain. They look recently used. There were two more terracotta amphorae, also containing fluid," he offered as he stared at the dark ooze spread across the flagstones.
Several in the assembly realized Antinous's very life itself lay spilled out onto the temple stones.
Thais and Lysias walked hesitantly to the pool of dark muck and lowered themselves to their knee at its edge. Thais was quietly weeping. Lysias was visibly mortified. He dipped one fingertip in the pool to examine its consistency. He fell to sobbing.
"Antinous?", he called aloud plaintively, his pain audibly startling the assembly. Hadrian raised himself from his seat, his eyes wide and fixed upon the pool of sludge across the granite.
"We have one further matter to address, Great Caesar!" Suetonius declared aloud.
"What could that possibly be, Inspector?" Hadrian replied in rasping tones redolent of abject despair.
"I wish you to ask one of your Guard for an inspection of their purse, Caesar."
"Their purse?" Hadrian asked impatiently. "Why so, Tranquillus? What's important about a purse?"
"I wish you to command Decurion Scorilo to open and empty the contents of his belt pouch to our view."
"Decurion Scorilo of the Horse Guard? Must I ask one of my most senior and best officers to degrade themselves here, Inspector? Your enquiry is getting out of hand, Tranquillus!"
"I believe I must ask, my lord. It is necessary. If I am mistaken in my reasoning you can dismiss me from your service and prosecute me for the insult, Caesar."
Hadrian faced toward Scorilo and gave the order.
The tattooed German was initially hesitant, but then unlaced the purse-pouch at his sword belt. The investigating team's hearts were in their mouths, with their eyes on the pouch. Had Suetonius erred in his gamble?
"Show us the contents, Decurion," Hadrian instructed. Macedo moved forward to have a closer view and announce the findings.
Scorilo poured baubles from the pouch onto his large, broad, warrior's hardened palm. He silently offered the items to view. Macedo read out the list of debris.
"One gold aureus, two silver denarii, some bronze coins, two ivory dice well-worn, a bone toothpick, a small ball of black resinous substance wrapped in a leaf, and a man's jeweled ring. The ring!" he repeated excitedly. "Quality silver; well worked; set with a deep blue lapis lazuli stone carved with the figure of the deity Abrasax, I think. It is surrounded by mystic symbols and antique inscriptions! We have seen this ring before!"
Hadrian rose bolt upright. His eyes had cleared, his stoop dispersed, and his physical energy was restored.
"Scorilo! My protector Scorilo! Where and how did you attain that jewel? How did you come by Antinous's special gift from me? You are no thief, are you? Surely not? That ring is a rare magical talisman of great value. Do you rob the dead? Account for yourself, Decurion!"
Scorilo remained firmly silent. Anna Perenna's voice began to rise to a shout from her guarded position. The priestess's cries were becoming feverish with recklessness.
"Scorilo! Brother Scorilo!" she crowed loudly. All heads turned abruptly from the decurion to Perenna and back again.
"Brother, the time for Zalmoxis has come! It is over! The oath is fulfilled! Zalmoxis will reward us for all eternity. The Iron King's loved one is sacrificed. His life blood was forfeit! We have tasted that blood. The God has absorbed his victim's arete from his gore. The gore is now putrid, it has been absorbed. It's over and done. We too can now go to the Underworld of Zalmoxis and join our ancestors at last!" The priestess was exultant.
The assembly broke into uproar.
"Will someone explain to me what is happening here!?" Hadrian bellowed over the cacophony. Geta stepped forward and assumed vocal command of the assembly.
"Silence all! Stand in place! Listen!" he commanded in the stentorian style of his father's distant memory. "The truth now comes to me! I see into my remote past as a child at Dacia.
The woman Perenna and the guardsman, Scorilo, are sister and brother. I see into my childhood days. These two are the daughter and son of the high priest of Dacia, old Dicineus the Sacrificer, who was my father's advisor. I see the woman called Anna Perenna when she was a child my own age. We were acolytes of Zalmoxis at the killing of Iron People captives. I forget her name but I recall her zest for the killings.
Her priestly father Dicineus and his family relished the sacrifices. She too had the marks of Zalmoxis tattooed on her face, the insignia of the priestly class and its bloodline. Her brother Scorilo was much older. He was already a young Wolf Warrior proven in combat. He was one of my father's fiercest bodyguards and has the victor's tattoos to prove it. He was one of the horsemen who escorted my father and mother, with my sister Estia and I, into the forests of Dacia to escape the pursuing Iron People.
Who are the Iron People? The Iron People are us, we Romans. I too am now an Iron Person. I too am a Roman.
My father discharged his guards to allow them to flee before the enemy could overtake us. But he demanded an oath of revenge, the oath to Zalmoxis. He sent my mother, his queen, and then himself to Zalmoxis. Before he killed himself he demanded we swear an oath to destroy the Iron People king's loved ones too, in reparation to Zalmoxis. It was a fearful oath of dire consequences!
I too swore it. I was very young. I swore to kill the Iron People king's loved one too, in vengeance. But I failed in my oath, I am pleased to say. The children of Priest Dicineus the Sacrificer did not! They killed the king's loved one, Antinous."
Geta slumped against Caesar's throne, exhausted.
Hadrian spoke in a disbelieving voice to Perenna and Scorilo.
"Is it true you are the children of Dicineus, that murderous priest?"
Neither responded.
"The Bastarnae were one of the tribes of the Dacian Confederation, yes?"
Again silence.
"Is it true the blood on the stones here is that of Antinous?" he asked further. Again no response.
Hadrian grew gray with distress.
"Why, Dacians, why? Why would you bleed such a gracious man, such an innocent, for your pointless obsession?" Hadrian's eyes were riven with pain.
Perenna struggled ineffectually in her captor's grip, her eyes wild, her body writhing with feverish energy. The kohl lines had begun to melt down her cheeks in her body heat; the ashen powders of her face were corroding from her skin; the hue of her oiled lips was smeared across her mouth. In her disorder she projected the energy of a wild forest creature or ghoul seething with savagery, an alien demon bent upon havoc.