“And you, leader of five? Do you and Odenathus stay too?”
“No,” she said, shaking her long braids, “we go home to the house of my aunt, in the city of Silk. She sent us to the Legions to learn, not to stay. Now that the war is over, we’ll go home and serve in the army of the city.”
Dwyrin sighed. He had feared that it would be so. Zoe reached over and squeezed his hand.
“You might be stationed in Syria,” she said, her voice hopeful. “Then we can come visit you at the great legion camp of Denaba. It’s only a few days’ ride from our city.”
“I suppose,” he said, feeling his throat constrict. “I would like to see Palmyra. It must be beautiful.”
“It is,” Zoe said, her face lit by a smile. “It is the most beautiful and gracious city in the world.”
“MacDonald!” Colonna stamped out into the square, his voice rattling the shutters. “You’ve duty. Get your lazy barbarian backside over here! And you too, little miss!”
Dwyrin grinned at Zoe and they slid off of the platform. Odenathus got up more slowly and brushed the sand and soot off his trousers. Then he clambered down and jogged across the square to join them.
Galen stood in a small stone room, his arms crossed over his chest. Around him, the walls were blackened by fire and the roof had cracked and fallen in. His boots were muddy and his cloak stained with the tenacious black mud that had been birthed from ash and rain. Two of his Germans grunted as they turned heavy blocks of cut stone over.
“Are you sure of this?” The Western Emperor’s voice was tinged with sadness.
“Aye, lord,” the chief of the Germans said, his blond beard smeared with soot. “One of the palace geld-men we caught knew the ring and the band of silver.”
The German reached down and gingerly picked up a withered, fire-blackened limb from among the debris on the floor. A partially melted silver band clung to the arm, and a gob of gold clung to one skeletal finger.
“A woman with dark hair, my lord, wearing the signs of the Princess Shirin. Dead, I think.”
The arm fell back onto the muck on the tile floor with a rattle. Galen turned away, looking around the room. The door, too, had burned away, but he could see the bite marks of axes on its outer face.
‘There was a struggle?“
The German nodded, pushing one of the other bodies aside with his boot. The body, even burned and withered, showed a thick gash in the sternum. In the mud, the Emperor could see the glint of broken rings of iron mail and the edge of a sword.
“Some fought, but then they fell and the others-the women-were murdered.”
“What else?” the Emperor said, frowning at the ruin of the room.
“This.” The German dug in a leather pouch on his wide belt. His grubby fingers drew out a disk of tin, pierced with a drilled hole. The fire had scored it, but portions were still readable. Galen took it, turning it over in his hand. The letters, driven into the face of the metal with a hammer and punch, were disfigured but still readable.
“Dardanus Nikolaeus. Nikos. A fifteen-year man.” The Emperor felt a brief disappointment.
“This tells me enough. Bury the rest and tell the quar termaster to mark this name and those of any others you find among the list of the dead.“
A pity, the Emperor thought as he walked through the ruins, the cowl of his cloak turned up. She and her men seemed to have the very luck upon them.
THE NECROPOLIS OF DASTAGIRD
Krista stood in the rain, feeling the heavy drops drum against the thick wool of her cloak. A storm thundered overhead, filling the sky with lurid yellow light. Lightning arced from cloud to cloud, or walked across the fields on the other side of the river with long jagged legs. She stood at the summit of the ziggurat in the dead city, her back to the great stone altar that capped the monument. Thunder growled, filling the heavens. Within the cowl of the robe, her face was dry and pensive.
On the horizon, a red glow stabbed through the murk. In the last hour, it had doubled in size. It pulsed like a great burning heart, visible even through the sheets of rain that blew across the dunes and the fields.
It must be a city, she thought, being consumed in fire.
She wondered who lived in the city-were they men like lived in Rome? Were they monsters as she had read in the tales of travelers, with faces in their stomachs?
She sighed, putting the question to herself again.
Is this the time to go? We are at the edge of the world, surely far enough to escape the curse. But where could I go? I spurned the Prince’s offer-that at least would have gained me horses and supplies.
Her ribs still ached, though Maxian’s touch, when he had grown strong enough to channel the power that healed, had knitted bone and sinew back together. Her bruises were gone and she could walk without limping.
Without him, said one voice, the timid voice, you would be dead.
Without him, another answered with asperity, you would be back in Rome, safe and sound, at a party or in bed with some handsome, well-spoken noble.
The stones under her feet began to tremble, causing the pools of rainwater to shiver and jump. She sighed and stood away from the wall. The Prince was at work again, far below, and she should be there. Descending the steps of the pyramid, she felt the two Valach boys slink out of the rainswept darkness around her and take up at her heels.
She smiled, her teeth white in the darkness. Among the Valach, the tribe followed the strong. She enjoyed thinking of herself as the Queen Bitch but winced, feeling a phantom of the pain it cost to gain their devotion. At the middle terrace, she turned off the stairs and pressed a stone in the wall. A door opened, steam and smoke curling out of it. A red glare shimmered down below. She went inside, and the Valach boys crept after her.
• Days of crawling along dusty corridors and banging on the walls of abandoned rooms had finally borne fruit. A deep cellar, beneath even the furnaces that drove the fire pits of the temple, had yielded an uneven pavement. Under the moldy bricks, carefully prized up by the Valach boys under the eagle eye of Gaius Julius, a circular door had been discovered, set into a floor of chalky limestone. The door was inscribed by seven circles of brass; each etched with a thousand signs. Between the circles of brass, ancient characters had been chiseled in neat rows.
There was no lock, or hinge, only a smooth surface of stone and metal. Minute examination of the stones around the door found that to the right of it, about seven feet away, there was a dimple in the floor, as if a great weight had rubbed there repeatedly.
Maxian had taken the quarters of the high priest of the temple for his own after the battle in the room of fire. The entire camp had been moved into the chambers under the ziggurat. The larders were well stocked, and brick-lined cisterns filled with sweet cold water were buried under the pyramid. Even the great engine had been hauled down into the city by Khiron and the Valach boys, and rested, quiescent, within the walls of an ancient temple. The Prince devoted himself to the books of the priests, searching for the key to unlock the circular door.
Gaius Julius, with a cheerful insouciance and an eye to the desires of his master, looted the temple, loading the engine near to bursting with crates and boxes of scrolls, letters, tomes, tiny odd-looking soapstone figurines, parchments pressed between sheets of copper, flint daggers, and a box of jeweled skulls. Large sums of coin and ingots of gold went into the machine as well. Krista was bored nearly to tears, but she steeled herself to the smell of ancient dust and the feel of dead worms on her fingers and helped the Prince sort through the documents.
“This is too much,” Maxian snarled, pushing a diary of some long-dead priest away from him on the tabletop. “During the time of Faridoon the Twelfth, the priests came and went from the tomb on a daily basis, taking measurements, praying, all manner of things. Never once a mention of how the door is opened.”