"Was there anything in the stables?"
Nikos shook his head in negation. "No. Signs of horses and fodder for them, but nothing recent. It seems that we are too late."
Thyatis nodded absently. She reminded herself of the things that the girl, Krista, had told them about the Prince and his habits. By her count, if it could be trusted, there should have been almost a dozen people living in the villa; the Prince, his homunculus, the two risen dead, and the Walachs. From what she had seen of the ground floor, and heard of the other buildings, it seemed that they had decamped. All signs pointed to a hurried but thorough evacuation of the premises.
"Search the grounds," she said, turning back to Nikos and the other men clustered in the doorway. "They brought many heavy crates and boxes with them, but the wagons are still here. They cannot have gone far."
Nikos nodded and turned, but halted at the doorway, one hand on the wall. He looked back in question. Thyatis raised an eyebrow and smiled.
"Search in teams of three, like we trained," she said, hitching up her sword-belt. "Check the road for tracks of a single wagon going out and any other lanes or tracks that leave these buildings. The archers are to keep a signal arrow nocked." Nikos nodded and went out.
Thyatis looked around the room again, then bent to pick up her lantern. As she did so, the shadows shifted and she saw a crumpled piece of parchment behind the table. It was at the edge of her reach, but she snagged it with a fingertip. It was not dusty. The parchment crinkled as she unfolded it.
Lord Prince, it said in simple letters, I have gone and taken the little cat. My desire for life exceeds my love for you. If the gods will, we will meet again in a safe place, Krista.
Thyatis grunted. She had expected as much. The slave girl had told the truth, then. Thyatis folded the parchment into a tiny square and put it in her girdle before jogging out into the big echoing hallway that ran down the center of the house. Her nerves hissed with the blood-fire. The Prince would be close by.
The Gate of Sihon, Aelia Capitonlina
The steep narrow trail ended in a gate set into the base of the city wall. The rampart rose up from the top of the cliff like an extension of the hill itself. Zoe was panting in effort by the time they reached the shadowy vestibule. She glared at the desert chieftain's back- he did not seem tired. Given that he was easily twice her age, Zoe did not think it fair at all. The gate was small, shorter than most men, which would force anyone to bend down to pass through it. The face of it was covered with riveted iron plates and a square tower blocked out the night sky above. Anyone attempting to force the iron door would pay grievously for the privilege.
Mohammed moved into the shadows, bending down, and Zoe heard a rattle and click. The moon was well behind the bulk of the city now and it was very dark in the space before the gate. She shivered and pulled her cloak tight around her. From this vantage, she could look down upon the valley behind them. It was quite dark, save for a cluster of fires burning just a little way from where they had left the camels.
"Follow," came Mohammed's voice and she turned. The gate was open and led into utter darkness. Air rolled slowly out, heavy and humid with the smell of rotted cabbage and urine and offal. Zoe gulped and pulled an edge of her cloak over her mouth. The Quryash had already vanished inside and she hurried to catch up with the sound of his boots on the flagstones. His voice drifted back to her. "Do not speak. There may be guards."
The passage sloped upwards for a time, then rose sharply on a flight of broad steps, worn by the passage of many feet. The curved depressions on the stairs made it hard to keep one's feet, but Zoe staggered along in darkness for a time. Part of the passage was halfburied in debris. They rose out of the funk that had collected in the midden and her mind seemed to wake from a dream.
When it did, she felt the ache in her thighs and buttocks flare up into serious pain. She gasped aloud in alarm and stopped, leaning against the wall. The surface was mossy and slippery.
"Wait," she called. There was no answer. The sound of footsteps receded in the murk.
Zoe cursed, but with the lifting of the haze in her mind, she thought to calm her thought and call upon the powers that coursed in her blood. Two deep breaths settled her thought and allowed the first entrance. With it came the flowering of perception and the darkness fell away like a dropped veil. The walls stood out in sharp relief. Now she could see that under the patina of moss and age there were paintings and mosaics inset into the walls. The rounded steps had once been sharp-cut marble and a series of delicate arches crowned the hallway. She hissed in surprise, but saw too that the figure of the desert chieftain had almost disappeared up ahead.
Muttering, she jogged up the stairs. Her legs complained bitterly. They wanted a nice bed and a bath, not more climbing.
At the top of the stairway, there was another door, which now stood open, and a vaulted chamber beyond. She stepped through the archway and found herself standing on a broad open plaza, a thousand yards wide. The moon was low in the sky, but its light glittered back from limestone paving and lines of ornamental trees. Off to her left, to the south, a monumental statue rose up from the plaza, one arm raised to the heavens. Even cast in shadow, she could see that it was the form of an emperor.
She spat on the ground.
At the center of the plaza, where arcs of trees converged, a massive temple rose up on a stepped platform. It was open on three sides, with bulky columns rising like tree trunks. Its ridgeline was crowded with statues and votive sculptures. Within, half obscured by the colonnade, she could make out a sanctuary and something unexpected.
Unlike the usual run of Roman temples, there was a humped shape underneath the shadowed roof, taking the place of the usual walled sanctuary. Too, the back wall was not a solid surface, but it too was columns.
Halfway between the stairway house and the temple, she could see Mohammed, striding swiftly along the line of one of the curving roads. Ignoring the pain in her legs, she hurried after. Within moments, he had vanished up the steps.
Zoe passed between the pillars, her shadow falling on richly layered paint. Her boots clicked on the marble tiling. It had grown cold as the night passed, and here, in this exposed place, a ghost of breath puffed from her lips. She came out into the open space around the strange humped structure at the back of the temple.
A slab of rock, dark and pitted, thrust up from the marble floor. Indeed, the edges of the flooring tile had been worked to fit against it. A low barricade of wooden railing ran around it, keeping onlookers away from the massive plinth. Looking upon it, all unexpected, Zoe realized that it was the crown of the hill below them. This temple, the great plaza, the city, had grown up around it, everything here was focused upon this stone. It was very old and dragged at the will. Some momentous weight gathered around it. Zoe felt the air, letting her mage-sight expand to take in the temple and the buildings that surrounded it.
Everything in the temple complex, even the curve of the walkways and the ranks of planted trees, was oriented toward the stone. Each building, each statue, each arc weighed against it, binding it, trying to restrain the power that throbbed and radiated and spilled from the crevices and pits in that ancient, blackened surface.