And although Octavian’s assault on Vellica was set to begin with the dawn—now, Juba supposed—his stepbrother had told him to go away from the death and din of the battle, to find a quiet place behind their lines in order to discover whether he could control the spear’s power. After all, Octavian had mused, the Cantabrian might want it back.
It was that trust, more than the two artifacts behind him, that had Juba lost in thought for the moment. Octavian hadn’t trusted him for years, not since that day at the villa in Rome when he’d confronted Juba about showing the Trident to a woodworker. The day that he’d first made Juba use the artifact’s power to kill, to rip the life out of the slave Quintus.
Juba closed his eyes against the memory, and against all those that followed, all the men he’d killed with the power of a god.
In all that time, not once had Octavian let the Trident out of his possession. Not once had he let Juba handle it alone.
And now here, at the edge of the world, he’d given it to Juba—along with the spear of Corocotta. What did that mean?
Juba realized that he had begun to frown, so he opened his eyes and tried to smile. Whatever else it meant, he had two Shards of Heaven with him. Three, if he counted the Aegis of Zeus back in his tent. What it meant to have them was a question that certainly would need answering, but for now it was enough to have them.
And to see how they worked.
He dismounted and walked the horse to the burned-out remains of the wagon, where he’d stood with Octavian. Tying off the lead, he took a moment to stare once more at the crate and its unnatural flame scars that had surely come from the Lance of Olyndicus. It was, he thought, like a gashing wound. However the Shard was activated, it seemed that once it was in use it was like the spray of a fire-breathing chimera. That was different from the Trident and Palladium, which had always welled up energy in a concentrated effort—unless he and Selene had not yet tapped the fullness of their powers?
Juba turned away and, reassuringly patting his horse along its neck and flank, returned to his saddle and the two long bundles tied behind it. His hands paused as he began to reach for the leather straps and brass buckles. Though he’d helped Selene learn to control the Palladium, he’d not used a Shard himself in many years. Being this close to the Trident made him yearn to grip it once more, to feel its power course through his veins.
Besides, if there was a new way to focus its power—like the scar upon this crate—he should practice doing so before he tried to handle the spear.
Taking a deep breath, he let his fingers open the straps. He lifted free the bundle holding the Trident of Poseidon.
The artifact was just as he remembered it. The long, polished wood shaft fit neatly into the socket of the triple-pointed spearhead—a perfect fit made by a craftsman in Rome who’d been repaid for his talents first with Juba’s coins and then, later, with the knives of Octavian’s men, who would suffer none to know of this secret weapon. The three points of the spearhead were unlike the head of any other trident he had seen: the center spear pointed directly forward, as expected, yet although the ones to either side were broken off, it was clear that they did not angle forward, but instead shot out directly to left and right—as if a double-ended spear had been shoved through the base of the first. Around and down the silver metal of the head were two intertwined snakes—one bronze and one copper in color—whose mouths opened forward like they were weapons on their own.
And in the middle of it all was the Shard of Heaven, the real weapon. Set in a metal housing, it was a blacker-than-black stone that seemed to draw in the very light of the air around it. A similar stone was set within the Aegis of Zeus, which had belonged to Alexander the Great before Juba had taken it, and a similar stone was embedded within the crystal-like rock that was the Palladium. And if he had succeeded in taking control of it back in Alexandria, Juba was certain he would have found another stone, probably the biggest of all, within the Ark of the Covenant. Each Shard seemed to control a single element: the Ark, earth; the Palladium, air; the Aegis, life; and this Trident, water. The Lance controlled fire. The Shards of Heaven, each a remainder—or so Didymus had said—of the throne that had been destroyed when the angels in heaven had tried to resurrect the one God, who died giving free will to creation.
As he lifted the Trident—being careful to grip it by the wood and not the metal snakes, which functioned as conduits of the power of the Shard—Juba observed how the stone within its housing was looser than he last recalled. He had first noticed it loosening after Octavian had made him use the Trident to sink a Roman bireme at sea. Octavian had let him handle the Trident only once after that: at Actium, where he called up a far greater wave to swamp Mark Antony’s flagship and send it to the deep. The act had nearly taken the life from Juba, for through some means he did not understand the Shards could give power to their users—but they could also wrest power away if the users were not prepared, taking their very lives. This was the reason, Juba was certain, that Octavian would never use the Trident himself: if he failed to control its power, it would consume him.
What it meant that the stone had grown looser, Juba was not sure. Perhaps it meant that using the Shard diminished its power in some way—though he had noticed nothing similar happen to the Aegis and the Palladium—or perhaps the housing was simply ill-fitting for the black stone. Finding out if it was an issue of fitment seemed simple enough, but then Juba had never touched the stone directly. He feared very much what would happen if he did.
Juba walked ten paces or so from his horse. He planted the Trident butt-down before him, still holding on to its wood shaft as he looked between the interwoven snakes at the broken, charred heap of another cart not far away.
Taking a deep breath, Juba moved his hands up to grip the bodies of the two snakes where the curves of their curling bodies made a pair of handholds on each side of the Shard itself. He closed his eyes, letting the metal grow warm beneath his skin, letting that contact become a kind of unity. Then, letting out his breath, he fell back down into himself, back into a darkness that was him and not him. He pulled it up into his hands, pushed it into the stone, and then pulled it out before him, to make it ready to strike out toward the cart.
He knew at once the power of the Shard. He knew it as he remembered it—a pool of molten metal bubbling and churning in its hot rage to be free—but for a moment nothing happened. No energy flowed forth. The ruined cart stood unfazed.
Of course. Every other time he’d used the Shard, it had been with a clear water source: the sea, a barrel of water, a jug of wine. But the meadow was dry, even parched. What could the Shard use?
And then he felt it: a tingling upon his skin, like the tiniest of raindrops dancing in feather-light song. A few at first, and then more and still more. The metal beneath his grip grew warm.
Juba opened his eyes and saw what was happening now. A fine mist was forming, swirling into a kind of wispy cloud before him. Like the wind that Selene had raised with her Palladium, what Juba had raised was the semblance of a storm. It strained with an urge to dissipate, but with concentration Juba bunched it as tight as he could and then pushed it forward with as much mental strength as he could muster.
The droplets splattered against the side of the cart.