The man shuddered and gasped. He would take time to bleed out—as he himself would, an absent part of Caesarion’s mind noted—but once the Nubian’s hand fell away from the dagger, Caesarion let his body fall away, too.
He fell to his knees beside his only love. Her eyes were wide with horror and shock, and they seemed not to focus on him. Her breathing was in shallow, sharp, halting gasps. And the bottom of her dress looked as if it had been dipped in blood.
Like him, she was dying.
“Hannah,” he managed to say. “Hannah, love…”
“Caesarion?” Her eyes blinked, winced as she tried to focus on his through the haze of pain. “Oh, God, love,” she whispered. “So … sorry. Should’ve moved it … before.”
“I’m here. It’s okay. It’s all fine.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, then another, but something like a smile lit her face. “Up to you now. Ark … Save it, my love.”
He nodded. “I will.”
She smiled at that, as if she couldn’t hear the sounds of battle around her, as if she couldn’t see through his lies. “I think Pullo is right. About heaven.”
Caesarion touched her cheek. “I know he is.”
“He is,” Hannah repeated.
She sighed out her breath.
He took in another.
Her chest did not rise again.
Caesarion bowed his head for a moment, then he leaned forward and kissed her cheek one final time. The tears on his cheek mixed with hers. “I’ll see you there soon,” he whispered.
He used the Ark to pull himself up, and he looked around at the temple for the last time. Pullo and Vorenus still lived. Helped by Caesarion’s surprise tackle of so many of them, Pullo had beaten most of his attackers, but Vorenus was nearing the end of his strength. He was outnumbered, and he was staggering backward from the door he’d been trying to defend. His fight was only to prevent being outflanked now, and it was a fight he’d lose.
Hannah was dead. Caesarion wanted to weep, to curl up against her as he gasped out his last. Madhukar had died trying to protect her even as he must have known she was bleeding out her last moments on this Earth. Even as Caesarion watched, Vorenus parried one blow, twisted away from another, and then fell awkwardly onto his back.
God help us, Caesarion thought.
And in the same moment he remembered that there was no god anymore.
There’s only us. Our choices. Our actions.
And she’d told him to save the Ark.
In his last act on this Earth, with the last resolve of his failing body, the child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, the once-pharaoh of Egypt who by every right should have ruled the world, fell forward across the Ark.
And this time, Caesarion’s hands did not grasp it by the bronze and silver angels that adorned its surface. Instead, his hands fell palms-down upon the black disk set within the wooden surface.
This time he touched the Shard.
28
THE GATE OPENED
CARTHAGE, 25 BCE
On either side of him, Selene and Isidora were screaming, but all Thrasyllus could do was stare. He had, as a small part of his mind noted, never seen anything like it before.
He had known little of what the Shards were—they were artifacts infused with divine powers; he’d gleaned that much from what he’d overheard—but the full exposure of their reality left him petrified with fright, astonishment, and a yearning deep within to have the power for himself. Didymus and Apion could have the Great Library. With power such as this, he was certain he could have the world.
Before them, barely visible through a swirl of storm sparked with shocks of lightning that ripped through the vortex of air like probing, angry snakes, Juba was holding both the Trident and the Palladium. The Aegis on his chest glowed metallic blue with every flash of the energy surrounding him. In one moment he seemed to be laughing. In another he seemed to be crying out.
And through it all the power grew.
Thrasyllus looked up and saw that the spinning energy thickened and tightened as it rose, a column of pulsing black against the night sky. One by one, the stars seemed to be going out above them, and the analytical part of the scholar’s mind decided that the column must be opening up far above, unfolding itself and curling back down around them, like the curvature of a great dark dome.
To his right, Selene’s screams took on a new pitch of horror, and he turned to see that Juba had hugged the Trident and the Palladium to the Aegis, and that he was reaching down for what they’d told him was the Lance of Olyndicus.
Isidora was trying to step forward to Thrasyllus’ left, but the strength of the storm was too great. She staggered and fell, her walking staff tumbling away from her.
The lightning grew in its intensity, and for a moment Thrasyllus could see clearly that fire danced in horrible waves up the flesh of Juba’s arms, and the skin there was peeling back and forth—one moment flayed off by the heat, the next moment restored. It was as if his body fought against itself, whether to be unmade or kept whole. Through it all, Juba appeared to be smiling and crying and screaming an inhuman wail of horror.
At last the Lance came together with the other Shards at his chest. The world erupted in a flash of fiery light, and there was a great sucking sound riding the blinding glare. For the span of a heartbeat Thrasyllus was being pulled forward, feet sliding on the soiled rock floor, and then a wave of yawning sound burst against Thrasyllus’ chest, propelling him backward against the stone and into fresh darkness.
* * *
Quiet. A silence as still as the grave.
No, Thrasyllus realized. Not silent. There was a sound of straining. Teeth grinding. Breath coming in short bursts. And voiceless weeping.
The scholar opened his eyes.
The storm, the lightning, the wind … all of it was gone. All but two of the torches had been snuffed out by the tumult, but those that remained licked hungrily at the suddenly stilled air in the ruined temple. By their light, Thrasyllus could see that Juba was kneeling where he had stood. He was trembling, and his arms were close about him, presumably still holding the other three Shards against the Aegis. He was the one who was crying, the scholar realized. Soundlessly crying.
“Juba?”
Thrasyllus turned at the sound of Selene’s voice, and he saw that the beautiful young queen was on her hands and knees in the dim light, not ten feet away to his right. There was blood trickling down her forehead.
Juba was looking away from her. He did not turn. “You need to go.” His voice was hushed, strained through clenched teeth. “Don’t think I can stop it.”
“Stop what?” She crawled forward a few feet. Thrasyllus could see the fear and despair on her face. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. She knew it. She didn’t want to believe it.
Thrasyllus had been lying on his back, and he rolled himself upright. Selene had crawled a few feet farther.
“What I’ve done, Selene. God … I don’t even know why, Selene … it … it made me do it. The voice. The darkness.”
She trembled now, too. Thrasyllus saw her swallow hard, building her courage. “Juba, my love, put them down. Please. Come—”
“I can’t. You don’t know. Just go.” His voice trembled into a groan. “Please. I … can’t hold it back.”
She started to reply, but there was no time. Something broke in Juba. He gasped—a sound of both pain and relief—and power flowed out through him into the earth. Like tendrils of red-white fire it radiated outward, tracing along cracks in the stones, forming into glowing patterns that Thrasyllus dimly recognized as runes and glyphs, though he did not know the language.