The serpent seemed to writhe in his consciousness, its eyes stark with ancient malice. Its tongue flickered back and forth.
Use the blade, fool!
Lightning went off inside Quintus's skull. A nail-sticker like that to take out a giant serpent? He laughed, the coarsely cheerful mirth that Rufus reserved for the most awkward Legionary-in-training.
Not a serpent. Another illusion. The friezes and the broken walls turned firm again. Once more, the White Naacals marched over the roughened stone toward their altar, and power sluiced out like warm water pouring down an aching back, healing, comforting....
It was all a lie, wasn't it?
He let the dagger drop from his hand. Manetho wavered and sagged, and Quintus reached out to steady him—almost in the embrace of brothers.
"I've wasted time we can't spare," Quintus said. "Lead on."
He followed Manetho at a near run through what quickly seemed so like a maze that he expected a Minotaur to bellow and charge them at every crossing of the ways they passed. He had no thread, though, to mark his passage, and his Ariadne—to whom he would be faithful, unlike Theseus—lay in the grasp of their enemies.
Draupadi was, he reassured himself, a mistress of illusion, able to dispel hallucinations that might have finished off him and the Legionaries. Just as he must trust Manetho, he must have faith in them and their inborn strength to hold firm until he could retrieve the Eagle and lead them.
Now, he and Manetho raced through a narrow passageway. On either side, he heard a rushing sound. Water, perhaps, coursing through hidden channels as if through an aqueduct? Or air singing through tunnels set into the thick walls? Romans were engineers. These walls, though, made anything built by Rome seem like a shed flung up out of flat stones.
As they hastened on, it became easier and easier for Quintus to see the path up ahead. Some trick of the light, perhaps? He thought he saw a glow welling from the floor wherever Manetho stepped.
"They are coming," he said.
Was this to be a full rising of the slaves, then? Quintus's belly clenched. Was this how the gladiators had felt, turning on their masters, who were vastly more numerous and powerful than they? And yet, they had put Rome in such fear that it would never forget them. Given the Eagle, given its power, how much more could he—
"This used to be a place where the underpriests robed...." Manetho told him.
How long ago? Don't ask, Quintus. Don't even think of asking.
His foot brushed something, and he stumbled. What was that?
Something bulky sprawled against the rock. Quintus swerved, but could not avoid it. He went sprawling and fell hard against the wall, the carvings bruising his flesh. And his arm, dropping over what had tripped him, landed hard enough to bring a moan out of the man he had stumbled across.
It was Rufus's voice.
Jupiter Optimus Maximus and all the lesser gods, Quintus thought, as he knelt beside the centurion, feeling for wounds on the man's hard skull. Rufus groaned repeatedly. The light rising from the floor showed his eyes, glazed now, with the pupil of one eye larger than that of the other.
"Lad ... I mean, sir ... by all the gods, didn't know you had a twin. You'll need to be Castor and Pollux both to take on ... to the crows with that little bastard. His father should have exposed him at birth or thrown him from the Tarpeian rocks, which is what I'd do if I ever got him home.... Damn, my head, my head..."
Rufus gagged, doubling over and retching. Quintus supported his shoulders.
"Come on!" whispered Manetho.
Up ahead, Manetho might fume that they were out of time, but Rufus carried my stretcher. He forbade that I be abandoned on the desert or killed quickly when they thought I could not see. He taught me. And Manetho wasn't a man to abandon a comrade, either.
"Who?" Quintus asked, his heart sinking to depths he would have judged impossible.
"He came up behind us ... the lady and I... Edepol, sir, I'm glad you're here to take charge...."
"Draupadi?" Quintus asked. "What happened?"
"Poor girl never had a chance. That useless traitor, that Lucilius ... I'd like to have the purple stripe off their togas and them nailed up to a cross...."
In the ruined hall, Lucilius had crouched at first with the Legionaries and the slaves, but then gone outside, pleading restlessness and the need to breathe untainted air.
And that was all that was clean about him! Quintus let his hands rest on Rufus's shoulders, trying to reassure the older man: but there was no reassurance for either of them.
Even as Lucilius had slipped outside, were the voices already eating away at his resolve? He had always been apt for treasons, as long as Quintus had known him. And this was not the first time he had tried to strike a bargain with an enemy.
It had been hard enough for Quintus with his old Roman grandsire and—as Lucilius thought—his ludicrous respect for loyalty to resist the voices that the Black Naacals sent out to tempt those who would stand against them.
What had they promised the patrician? Gold, it went without saying, and perhaps Draupadi, compliant or not.
"He hit me first, sir," Rufus said. "I went down. And then he grabbed for the Eagle—our Eagle! The lady snatched it away before he could lay his rotten hands on it, and I tried, so help me Minos and Rhadamanthus, I swear I tried to go to her aid. But he grabbed her by one arm and told her that he wouldn't kill me if she went along without using her magic on him. That was bad enough. And then he kicked me, and I went crashing into the wall, a real tyro's trick.... Gods, I've been a fool, bungled everything. Oh, Dis, to the cross with this head of mine...."
"Steady there," Quintus muttered absently. "It's all right."
It would have been the cross or worse for all of them. The Black Naacals had Ganesha, with his great strength and power. And, while the old man had held out all these lifetimes and while he might well have endured until the final death that he had escaped in the whelming of his home, could he endure seeing a dear friend put to torment? Especially when the friend had been not just a student, but a daughter to him for all that time?
"She has the Eagle, sir," Rufus said. He stifled a groan—a sign he might recover if he concealed his pain. "I should be flogged, broken ... one woman and I could not even protect her...."
"Come on!" snapped Manetho. "They will betray us. Now we must hasten."
No! Do not think of Ganesha or Draupadi in torment. Do not think of the sacrifices of the Black Naacals. The priestess of the sun had power enough to use the Eagle; he only hoped that she would.
"The longer we stay here, the worse the chance.... Do you know what those priests do to their victims?"
Don't think of Draupadi's amber skin dappled with her blood or turned the color of chalk. Don't think of Ganesha's towering spirit quenched. And don't think of them.... They would put their hands on Draupadi. Maybe even Lucilius, who had wanted her and she had rebuffed him.
"First there will be a sacrifice. Then, they will begin," Manetho spoke, his voice hollow with dread.
Quintus had never expected to return to Rome, much less to return with the Eagle. He had, however dimly, begun to hope for some shreds of a life. Now, though, now, he must take the Eagle and wield it. A whole world hung in the balance.