Juba let go of the snakes and once more gripped the wooden shaft. He licked his lips, noticing how much drier the air around him had become.
That was where the water had come from, he decided. The Shard had drawn it out of the very air.
Juba smiled at the wonder of that, but then he frowned. The Trident was no match for the power that the Lance had shown. The concentrated force that Corocotta had managed to burn these carts and kill these men … it was so far beyond what Juba knew.
For that matter, where did that Shard’s fires come from? There was no fire in the area for the Cantabrian outlaw to manipulate, and what fire was upon the wind that it could be gathered in such abundance?
Juba thought back to the previous night, when Corocotta had stood before them with the artifact in his possession. He was surely ready to use it then, so how? Would it have drawn substance from the torches? That seemed so little. Yet he had held it out nevertheless, his thick hand enwrapping the black stone itself as he stood ready …
Juba’s eyes widened.
Corocotta had not held the staff or some other part of the Lance. He had held the Shard itself.
He’d held the Shard.
Juba swallowed hard. Then, biting his lip, he slowly raised his right hand and placed it, palm down, atop the Shard of Heaven.
If he had imagined the power of the Trident to be like a pool of molten metal, this was like pressing his hand down into its surface. The pain was white-hot, but not fire, not flame. It was something both liquid and solid, something that writhed around beneath his palm almost like a creature alive. In rippling flashes, pulsing with each beat of his stunned, lurching heart, it took more of him—though whether it climbed up his flesh or pulled it down, Juba could not tell. He fought to pull himself away, to pull back, but the searing shocks just pulled him on, deeper and deeper into a bright, screaming light.
He had closed his eyes at the lurching shock of the power, and as it rushed up his arms and began lapping like waves against his chest, shaking him into convulsions, he opened them as if he might witness his flesh consumed.
What he saw instead was that his hand was unharmed, but it was crackling with ripples of lightning that flashed in hot sparks across his skin.
His jaw was clenched by the agony of the power rushing through him. It was the only thing preventing him from screaming out whatever last gasps of breath he had.
His shaking legs gave way, and he began to fall backward, his hand still wrapped around the flashing stone as if it was rooted upon it.
The horizon fell away. The sky rose like a great hood over his eyes.
He saw the gathering storm.
Above him, wispy streaks coalesced and grew into a churning black pillar of cloud that spun up into the pale blue summer sky, looming over the parched landscape. Lightning flashed in its depths, like hungry beasts in a dark cage.
Juba’s back struck the ground, and what air he had in his lungs coughed out in the same moment that a bolt of jagged lightning flashed down and exploded into the Trident with an explosion that shook the earth.
Juba somehow unclenched his jaw, and he screamed back against the pain and the power, willing it out of his body and into the Shard. Above him the lightning flashed again, menacing, but he pushed that away, too. It did not strike.
The shocking fear that had threatened to consume him slowed and halted. He began to take deeper, steadying breaths. He could feel the presence of the power that was now coiled within the Shard, he could feel it poised like a beast ready to leap and rip his heart from his chest. But it did not jump. It sparked and crackled there, as if it was watching, as if it was waiting.
Juba—his hand still locked upon the terrible black stone—managed to rise to his knees and then stand, panting at the exhaustion of his willpower. He could smell rain in the air. He could feel more lightning roiling above him, ready to be commanded.
Bracing himself, gritting his teeth in the effort to keep the power controlled within the Shard, Juba focused on the remains of the cart and willed the gathered power into its destruction.
Released at last, the lightning struck out from the Trident, hot and bright, a jagged bolt of energy that ripped through the air and impacted the charred wood like the crack of a mighty whip.
The cart exploded outward from the impact in fragments of blackened wood and cascading sparks. And at last, as the energy dissipated and left him, Juba finally managed to let go of the Shard, dropping the Trident to the ground.
Juba fell to one knee, gasping air, his eyes riveted on the destroyed cart. Broken splinters kicked high by the discharge clattered down to the grass around him. The air smelled strangely sweet.
What he’d just seen, what he’d felt … the power was simply indescribable. It was unfathomable.
“My God,” he panted. “My God.”
At the sound of a quiet rumble, he at last turned to look upward at the sky. The clouds, so quickly summoned into being, were breaking apart. The coiled fury that had been there moments earlier was now idly drifting away on high, indifferent breezes. Juba watched it for a few moments, then he sat down roughly into the grass, staring at everything and nothing.
He’d had no idea the true power of the Trident. It wasn’t just the movement of water. It was storms. Lightning. It was the power of Poseidon. The power of God.
And something in his heart told him that there was still more that it could do. That he could do.
Knowing what he might do with it made him want to laugh. Knowing what he’d already done with it made him want to be sick.
For several minutes, Juba didn’t move.
Then, collecting himself at last, he picked up the Trident from where it had fallen—being careful not to touch the snakes or the Shard itself—and walked it back to the bundle behind his saddle. Only as he was placing it there did he notice that it had changed. The stone no longer shook within its housing. It was stable. Solid. It had, Juba was certain, grown.
But how? And what did it mean?
Juba frowned. He was too exhausted to think. He felt weary straight down through his bones.
And he still had another Shard to test.
Very carefully, as he settled the first artifact into place, he pulled out the second: the spear that Corocotta had carried into the tent and handed over with such ceremony. Then he walked back to the spot where he’d stood to use the Trident.
Hours earlier, in the darkness of the command tent, he’d seen a glimpse of the stone in the spear. It had been only a glimpse. But seeing it now in the light of the breaking day it seemed different than he had expected. It was a glossy black stone, but it didn’t swallow the light the way the stones did upon the Trident of Poseidon and the Aegis of Zeus. It was instead dark in color yet flickering with strands of the growing light around it, like burned glass.
The stone in the Palladium could seem different from the others, too. Another question he would consider later.
There were no obvious ways to hold the weapon, so Juba simply gripped it as he would any other spear. Widening his stance, the spear firmly in his hands, he couched it against his hip, the spear point aimed at one of the wagons across the way. Then he closed his eyes and sank back into himself with a sigh, mentally bracing for the rush of the power he’d felt when he’d wielded the Trident or donned Alexander’s armor.
Nothing happened.
Juba blinked. He shifted his grip—gently at first, but then with increasing fervor. The spear didn’t react. It was as if it was nothing but an ordinary weapon, adorned with a black stone.
In desperation, he held it before him and wrapped his fist around the stone, just as Corocotta had.
Nothing.
But it had to be the Lance of Olyndicus. It was there last night. Corocotta would not have come without it. And whatever else the man was, he was no liar. Juba had seen his reaction when he mentioned Olyndicus, and he’d said he had it with him. But if this wasn’t it, where was it? Where had the Cantabrian and his little crippled slave hidden—