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The Palatine Hill, Roma

An ewer of wine rattled sharply, then danced across the edge of the tabletop and tipped clattering to the floor. Galen leapt up at the unexpected sound and then swayed drunkenly. Anastasia, still holding Aurelian's arm, felt the room jump and the rattle and crash of toppling vases and statuary was obscenely loud. Plaster dust cascaded from the ceiling in a white mist. The Emperor fell backward, striking the dining couch, and fell over onto the floor. Distantly, the Duchess could hear shouts of fear and the clanging of alarm bells. The floor steadied, though there was still a queasy feeling in the air.

"An earth tremor?" Galen grasped the edge of the couch and pulled himself up. "I've never heard of such a thing in Rome!" Plaster dust settled on his brown hair.

Aurelian stood as well, his bearded face streaked with tears. "What do we do?"

"A doorway or arch," said Anastasia, striding to the heavy archway that led out onto the balcony overlooking the Forum. "It is safest there."

Galen hurried to her side, dragging his brother behind him.

The earth trembled again, but it was not as sharp. Only an echo of what had gone before. The marble flooring quivered and the walls gave forth an alarming groan, but nothing fell and there were no screams of pain.

Anastasia looked out over the rooftops, her dark eyes seeking out the shape of the Quirinal and her house. Lights still sparkled there and the city seemed the same. She felt herself breathe at last. Perhaps there will be only one tremor?

"Look!" Aurelian shouted in fear. The Duchess turned and saw, to the south, over the roofs of the palace and the walls of the circus, a great red glow filling the night sky. It flickered and pulsed and then suddenly died away.

"Fire in the city," whispered the Duchess, voicing the single great fear of the urban Roman. Despite the presence of numerous public and private fire brigades and strict building codes, the tenements of Rome, particularly those on the Aventine and beyond, were deathtraps waiting for a stray spark to set them alight. With the earth shaking, it would be nothing to have an oil lamp skitter off a table and fall into papers or hay or old clothing. A tiny apartment would be an inferno in moments, wicking up the poorly plastered walls and catching the dry exposed roof beams. Thousands could die in such an inferno. She grasped the Emperor for support.

His face grim, Galen stared at the southern horizon.

"That is not a fire in the city," he said. His voice was like iron, inflexible and certain sure. "That is far away and big, bigger than any fire we have ever seen."

The City Once Known As Agamatanu, Persia

Long-lashed eyelids flickered open, revealing pupils of a rich yellow. Narrow irises of red flickered and a membrane occluded the surface of the eye, then slid away. The eye moved in darkness, seeing that the candles had burned down to stubs on the copper holders. There was movement and a rustling like beetles squirming in a dry well and the figure stood up.

Dahak, scion of the House of Sassan, once brother of the King of Kings, raised a hand. A leprous pale light sprang from the walls, flickering with viridian and indigo. The sorcerer stood in a small bare chamber buried deep under the Palace of Seven Gates. It was round and lined with walls of flat ochre bricks. There was one door, still closed. The floor was covered with hexagonal tiles, each incised with a single spiky glyph.

The sorcerer hissed in wonder, his will and thought turned inward. Far to the west, beyond the curve of the world, enormous power had been uncorked with traumatic results. Even from here, from within a shielded chamber built by the Old Ones, he could taste the deathflower. It was bitter on his tongue, attenuated with such distance. He craved it and his body trembled with need.

Someone drinks deep tonight, the sorcerer's thought was sick with envy. Another power is waking. He wondered whom this new one served. Then Dahak shivered, feeling the cold of the abyss between the stars and he put the thought away. Even in memory, the will of his master burned him. Day would come soon and he would need to take a pleasing shape. It was a small effort, but it whetted the edge of his hunger.

Garbing himself in black and gray and crimson, the sorcerer went out, closing the lead door behind him. Despite its vast weight, it moved gently, like a feather. That fat priest is still about, he thought, smiling to himself. Very plump indeed.

Above Vesuvius

The Engine screamed high into the air, shedding a contrail of white behind it, letting the power of the thick crystalline spheres in its heart find full release. It was not enough. Below it, below the layer of cloud and haze, the mountain- at last released from ancient constraint- gaped wide and let fury spew.

The top quarter of the cone ripped away in one all-encompassing titanic blast of superheated compressed gas. A mile of corroded lava and soil vaporized in an instant and the sky lit up with a conflagration like the heart of the sun unfolding on earth. Pumice and ash and boulders bigger than the Flavian were ejected into the air, shrieking upward like comets. A shockwave of sound thundered across the land, shattering windows, knocking down trees. It was the forefront of an incandescent cloud of burning gas that swept down the side of the mountain.

The Engine, feeling the power hurtling toward it, banked sharply and screeched off to the north in a steep dive. Air whipped past, over surfaces poorly designed for such velocities. Iron scales tore loose from the skin and sailed away in the slipstream. The great iron wings groaned in torment and in its heart, the pressure of such speed caused the crystal spheres to ring and crack. Tiny fissures rippled over the surface of the globes, spalling flakes of microthin glass into the air. Still, the Engine hurtled on, speeding away in front of the wall of fire.

Seconds after the roof of the mountain had torn away, the deserted villa at Ottaviano was smashed flat by the near-solid wave of air that pressed before the gas cloud. Then the fire swept across it and the trees and fences were consumed. The incandescent gas cloud boiled downslope, consuming everything in its path.

On the seaward side of the mountain, the rupture tore a vast chasm in the side of the cone and the molten heart surged forth, spilling down cliffs and over pastures in a swiftly flowing river. Within minutes, the first vomit of fire had separated into dozens of rivers that rolled inexorably down toward the shore.

***

At the back of the Engine, in the cargo hold, Thyatis clung for dear life to a metal spar. The wooden crates had crashed forward with the steep dive, tearing loose from their moorings. After climbing into the hold, she had crawled into a space along the wall where she would hide. Now she braced one leg, bleeding from a long slashing cut, against the forward support and put her back to another. Air roared around her, but she was close to blacking out as a vacuum formed in the hold.

The front of the incandescent cloud smashed over the Engine and it lost all flight control. It spun like a leaf in a tornado, cartwheeling through the sky. One wing, stressed beyond even the powerful incantations of the Persian magi, tore from its moorings and vanished into the night. Only the wavering, simmering ward that the Prince had summoned allowed the body of the machine to survive.

In the forward control space, his face smeared again with blood from an exploding glass plate, Maxian clung to a metal support, his fingers white on the iron. Everything tumbled around him, flying up into the air, as the Engine plummeted toward the earth. Outside the oval windows at the front of the Engine, the sky was a blanket of flame. The Prince struggled to maintain the sphere of defense, drawing on the reservoir of power that still spewed from the mountain.

The initial shockwave of superheated air rushed past them, leaving the Engine spinning out of the sky. Maxian dragged himself to the window, his thought stiffening the machine, willing it to restore control. Like a snake, it writhed sideways but suddenly leveled off and hurtled through the air.