He staggered a step, felt his arm rattle as he strained against the tide, but then he felt the power of the Aegis pushing back, bracing him against the onrushing tide until he had finally controlled it, calmed it, and held it still.
But gods, it was strong. So very strong. It was as if what he’d felt in Vellica, the stroke of power with which he’d killed all those people, had been only a pool, and now he saw that beyond it lay the boundless sea.
This, he thought. This was truly the power of God. The power to do His will, to build up, to destroy, to do His will to the uttermost end. The power around Juba swirled now in ready currents, like a lacing through the fabric of creation, and he could reach out and grip it.
“Juba?”
He heard Selene calling to him, but there was another voice now, too. It spoke from the darkness that surrounded them. It spoke in the wind, and its words were a language he did not know, whispered into his very bones.
But he understood them all. He knew what the shadow wanted. And without thinking about it, he knew it was what he wanted, too.
Because it was for Selene. It was all for her.
In the gathering storm Juba reached out into that tower of midnight, that place where light was just a memory.
He reached out into the shadow. Then he reached for another Shard.
27
LIFE FOR LIFE
ELEPHANTINE, 25 BCE
Caesarion had known he couldn’t swim the full width of the river. It was too far, the current too strong, even if by luck he wasn’t taken by a crocodile in mid-swim. Besides, there was nothing for him on the other side. Syene was in flames, and Hannah was here. Pullo and Vorenus were here. The Ark was here. While he still lived, he had to try to help them.
It was a near miracle that he lived. He’d rung the bell until the attackers were coming through the trapdoor, and then he’d jumped from the tower, tumbling painfully onto the tiled ridge of the building below. As the men shouted behind him, he’d then run and leapt for the Nile.
To his great relief, they’d not followed—whether because they couldn’t swim, because they thought him unlikely to last against the beasts of the river, or because they just had better things to do, Caesarion didn’t know.
It only mattered that he was alive. There was still hope.
He’d thought about letting the current push him north, down the river, but the crocodiles were thicker there. And it would carry him away from the fighting, away from his friends. So instead he’d turned and begun to drive his body hard against the current, staying as close to shore as he could once he made a wide berth around the harbor, which was swarming with attackers.
The screaming from the town was loud, the fires that sprang up glowed like eerie bubbles against the foggy night, and with each stroke of his legs and arms he was certain that toothy jaws would snap them away in the black water, but there was no choice.
He swam on.
His lungs burned from the struggle, his heart quaked. But then, just as fear and exhaustion threatened to take the courage from him, Caesarion saw it: a black doorway in the rock of the shoreline. A chance. Hope.
Caesarion swam for it, moving faster now as he angled across the current toward the shore, as he made one last thrust of energy, frightened that it would be in this last moment that he’d be taken to the black depths by the reptilian monsters that haunted the fishermen of the Nile.
Nothing came for him. He reached the doorway and splashed out of the water onto stone steps in a rock-hewn corridor so midnight black he couldn’t see his hand before his face.
It was the Nilometer. Grasping for the wall to lean against it and catch his breath Caesarion felt the chiseled signs upon it, the glyphs and letters marking the depths of the water against the stone.
And that meant he was just across the walkway from the Temple of Satis. He’d only need to run a short way across those same paved stones he’d walked minutes earlier. Then through the Temple of Khnum, straight to the Ark and his friends—if they were still there, if they were still alive.
Caesarion shook the despair away.
Vorenus would fight. Pullo would fight. By the gods, his beloved Hannah would fight.
They were alive. They’d make it. He just had to get to them.
He pulled himself up, his breath slowing down enough for him to begin to carefully climb the stairs in the pitch darkness.
To his relief and terror, it did not stay dark for long. He wasn’t five steps from the water when he heard shouts from above, and the gated end of the Nilometer was outlined in torchlight as attackers began to run past it.
Caesarion threw himself against the wall, trying to make himself small on the chance that anyone turned to look in his direction, but none did.
They passed by, but there remained glow enough to see the stairs now: temple buildings nearby were alight, and the screaming told the story of priests or servants still inside.
He hurried up the remainder of the stairs and carefully unlatched the gate from the inside. He looked in both directions, saw no one. His luck, he decided, was changing.
Not about to wait for more attackers to show up, Caesarion took a single deep breath and then burst from the gate, sprinting for the Temple of Khnum.
He did not get far before the flash of fire, the ring of battle, and the cries of the dying made clear that the attackers had beat him there. He ran on, and on the paved walk and the stone walls before him he saw now the shadows of men traced by the flickering firelight like terrible, shape-shifting demons.
He ran on, not knowing what else to do, but certain that he’d never make it through the temple alive.
Ahead, melting out of the fog, he saw the scaffolding around the obelisks being built in front of the Khnum temple. And he saw a figure, a sword in his hand, pulling out of the clouded shadows beside them and moving in his direction.
The man had dark skin, darker even than a native Egyptian’s. A Nubian, one of the men of Kush, Caesarion realized. From farther up the Nile to the south.
Caesarion’s run hitched for a step, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. And if he could somehow get the man’s weapon, maybe …
A fool’s hope. Even with a Nubian sword, even if he could kill with it—which he wasn’t sure he could do—he’d never fight his way across the floor of the temple. It was too far to cross. He’d need to be able to fly if he wanted to reach the Ark.
Caesarion’s eyes suddenly widened at the thought, and he lowered his shoulder as if he meant to bull the man over.
The Kushite shouted something, and he seemed to laugh as he steadied the blade in his hand.
Three steps away, Caesarion raised himself up, almost as if he intended to embrace the sword that even now the Kushite was swinging toward his chest. Then, in the same movement, Caesarion fell away, kicking his legs out in front of him and letting his momentum propel him forward into a slide.
The Nubian blade arced through the air just inches above Caesarion’s face as he passed beneath the blow—for a frozen instant he saw himself reflected in its metal surface, his face red in the firelight—and then he was reaching out with his right arm, grabbing the Kushite’s leg and pulling it out from underneath him.
Already imbalanced from his swing, the man fell awkwardly, flailing out and dropping his sword as he hurtled down toward the stone. There was a hollow cracking sound as his head hit the ground.