Another stone shrieked down out of the heavens and arrowed into the sea within a dozen feet of the ship. Shirin, her face wrapped with a gauze veil to keep the hot ash from her throat, turned and shouted at the ship's captain.
"Get us away from the shore, fool! We'll be holed by one of these meteors! Back us away!"
The captain stared back at her, his face blank with fear. He had been useless since the shockwave from the exploding mountain had torn the sail away and nearly capsized the ship. Shirin had been below, in her tiny cabin, sleeping, when the sky lit up with a sudden new dawn. The boom of the eruption had shocked her awake, just in time to be thrown fiercely against the wall. She would sport a fine bruise on the right side of her head for that. By great good luck, the ship had been angled almost directly in line with the mountain, and the hell-wind that had rushed after the sound had only torn the lesser mast away and shredded the main sail.
By rights, the Cos should have been moored off one of the headlands by Surrentum for the night. But this same captain had thought that he could make up time lost off the coast of Sicilia by tracking on the lights of Oplontis and Baiae and Herculaneum to bring him into harbor. Now his fat-bellied merchant-man wallowed in an uneasy sea just off the burning shore.
"You men, put out the harbor oars!" Shirin strode across the deck, her cloak billowing behind her in the hot fetid air. She had taken to wearing a long severe gown with a veil and a woolen wrap. Since taking passage on a leaky coaster from the island port of Naxos, she had been forced to do bodily harm to five or six different men who thought that a woman traveling alone was fair game. Too, at Brundusium, she had purchased a fine knife, two hands long, with a glittering sharp edge. "Now!"
The sailors stared up at her in fear. They had been praying and sacrificing grain and wine from the moment that the mountain had cracked open. They cowered on the main deck, huddled and miserable. Shirin cursed and jumped down the steps among them.
"The oars!" She shouted, kicking the nearest sailor. The man rolled over, curling up into a ball. "We must move away from the shore!"
The others inched away, avoiding her eyes. The Khazar woman stepped to the railing. It was no more than a mile to the beach. She squinted. The strand was seething with dark figures outlined against the burning buildings behind them. More meteors lashed down out of the sky. It seemed that the ash-fall was becoming heavier. I could swim that, thought Shirin, sorting possibilities in her mind like a gambler shuffled ivory tokens. She wrenched the cape loose, ignoring the tugging of a cheap copper brooch that snapped and skittered away across the deck. Quick fingers checked her belt, her money, and the knife. Red burned at her throat, where the Eye lay, reflecting the sullen glow in the sky.
A glowing meteor the size of a chariot screamed down out of the sky and crashed through the rear deck of the Cos, shaking the whole ship from stem to stern. The deck jumped like a goosed horse and Shirin went sprawling, banging her head on the planks. Splinters and lengths of wood scythed across the deck, killing three of the sailors instantly. Black water vomited up from the gaping wound and the whole ship groaned in pain. Its hull shattered, the Cos tipped as the rear hold filled with rushing water.
Shirin lay, dazed, on the decking, staring at the sky swimming queasily above. It was a constant roil of black and red and deep orange. Clouds billowed and surged, driven by the columns of heat rising from the burning cities. Meteors streaked across the sky. Above everything, the mountain glowed and pulsed as it bled fire onto the surrounding land. She blinked, trying to clear hot ash from her eyes. The deck was tipping fast and she began to slide down toward the gaping hole. Struggling, she tangled a hand in a rope and swung to a halt. Soon the ship would be near vertical as it slid into the depths of the sea.
Fighting off vertigo and a pounding headache, Shirin crawled up the rope and hooked an arm over the railing. She had no time to kick off her boots, so she would have to do that in the water. With a great effort, she managed to get both arms over the railing. The ship was settling faster now, sliding down into the oily black water. Swinging a leg, she managed to get her foot over the side.
Able to see the surface of the water once more, she cast about for the shore, trying to get her bearings. She was facing the wrong way, looking out to sea. There was something odd about the water and she paused for a split second.
The waves were gone. The sea seemed oddly flat, like the surface of a still pool. Then it tilted up and Shirin shook her head in puzzlement. That made no sense, the ship should be tilting, not the water. Something appeared up at the mouth of the bay, a white line in the darkness. Then the ship shuddered again, its keel grounding on the seabed. Water rushed past and Shirin felt the Cos topple over. The sea was running out, and strongly too, like a racehorse on the home stretch. She clung grimly to the rail as the ship slewed sideways and ground to a halt in suddenly shallow water.
Only a mile away, a wall of black water sixty feet high rushed toward the shore.
Shirin looked up. There was a sound, a sound like a thousand elephants stampeding on a plaza of stone. The wall loomed over the ship, curling up and up and up, its surface slick and shiny, the rumble of its passage filling the world. The Cos spun in the eddy before the tidal wave.
She threw up a hand, heedless of the uselessness of the gesture. There was no blur of life images before her eyes, only a deep and abiding anger at being delayed from seeing her children.
The Valley of Sion
Dwyrin started awake, his bare skin flushed and slick with sweat. Fragmentary images of a man flying amid a sea of burning clouds faded. The air in the tent was cold. Once night stole over the hills of this barren land, it grew chill very quickly. Given his dubious rank as the senior thaumaturge of Nicholas' detachment, the Hibernian had quarters in the principa all to himself. Normally, four men would bunk down in a room this size. Now he was alone. The night was quiet and the deep rumbling sound that he thought he had heard was nowhere in evidence.
He sighed, wiping sweat from his forehead and tucking his long braids behind his ear. Since returning to the desert, the evil dreams that had haunted him on the road from Antioch had passed. He hoped that they were not beginning to recur. Dwyrin sat up and pushed the blankets aside. He felt better in the cold night air. His skin was flushed and hot. Perhaps I should forgo these blankets: He froze, suddenly aware that someone was sitting in the room with him.
There was only a dark shape, but against the dim light of the lanterns hung along the via principa outside the building, he could see the silhouette of a man. There was one wooden folding chair and a little collapsible desk that one of the engineers had loaned him. The man's presence, once noticed, was unmistakable. It filled the chamber like a stormcloud.
"Who are you?" Dwyrin was absurdly pleased- his voice was level and calm.
There is the fire that man makes, and this can be turned to evil use.
Dwyrin's eyes widened in the dark and he closed them, letting the mediation steal over him, opening his sight. When he had done so, he perceived that an old man with a long white beard, matted and tangled with bits of leaf and twig, was sitting in the chair. There was a subtle light that illuminated him from within, showing strong Persian features and a prominent nose. He was garbed in muddy brown robes and a white scarf that lay down on his chest.