But when he turned, he simply froze.
“My God,” he whispered.
Not five feet from him, the floor of the temple ended in a jagged torn ledge, like the frayed edge of a ripped scroll. The walls of the temple to his left and right ended in similar tatters of stone. It was as if a great, unseen knife had cut the temple in half and was lifting this end of it into the sky, offering it to the heavens.
It was impossible, Vorenus thought. Impossible.
In the same instant, as if it recognized the same truth of its impossibility, the power that was thrusting it all upward let go. Everything hung, floating in the lightening fog—Vorenus, the floor of the broken temple beneath him, the snapped halves of the walls to either side of him—and then, with a roaring exhalation, it all fell back toward the shattered earth.
Vorenus didn’t have time to imagine what destruction awaited them upon impact. But he knew enough to know that to stay was to die. So he shoved himself toward the edge as it fell. And when he saw the earth-bound half of the temple seeming to rise up to meet him as the sinking mass continued its ever-speeding descent, he leapt from the edge, screaming as he reached out, his limbs flailing in the air.
In his mind, he’d imagined that he’d make it to the other floor. Perhaps he’d land awkwardly and twist an ankle, but he’d make it.
Instead, the ragged edge of the temple’s broken but otherwise unmoved paving stones hit him in the chest as he fell into them.
His hands scrambled for purchase, but already his impact against the edge of the rocks had him bouncing away. The last of the rock slipped away from his grip. From below and behind him he heard a crushing, sliding destruction, and he began to fall down into it.
Just as he was about to curse the gods he didn’t believe in one last time, just as the floor slipped out of his sight and he started the fall into the chaos of crashing earth below him, a hand reached out and grabbed his forearm.
His shoulder pulled, stretched. The hand slipped along the scars that Vorenus still carried from the battle of Actium, but it stopped at his wrist at the same moment his own fingers wrapped around his savior. That arm was scarred, too, and when he looked up, dangling by one arm off what had become a cliff, he wasn’t shocked by the face he saw. No matter the scars, no matter the years, it was the face of the only person he could say he’d truly loved.
“Got you,” Pullo said, smiling down at him through the strain, squinting as a cloud of dust rolled up and over them from below.
Vorenus had dropped his gladius—he couldn’t remember when—and so he swung his free hand up to grab hold of his old friend’s wrist. “Not a good day to die,” he panted.
“Not yet,” Pullo said, beginning to pull with what Vorenus imagined must be the last of his herculean strength.
Vorenus held tight to his friend’s grip, helping as best he could by kicking his way up off the shattered earth, until he joined Pullo on the floor of the temple. Clouds of dust continued to billow up behind them.
He was only beginning to gulp air into his lungs when he looked up and saw, illumined in the growing light, the Ark of the Covenant. The canvas he’d thrown over it had been pulled away, and there was the shine of blood upon the glorious angels atop it.
Pullo and Vorenus got to their feet, helping each other balance in their exhaustion. The world had grown strangely silent but for the still-resounding crash of falling rocks somewhere down below them. The battle seemed to be over. Most of the Nubians had fallen away, and the sounds of war with them.
The two old friends staggered forward, shoulder to shoulder. They saw Madhukar, a dead Kushite atop him. And then, stepping around the Ark, they saw Caesarion.
A long mark of smeared blood showed how the young man they’d known since he was a child had slid down the side of the Ark. He was seated now beside Hannah, his hand in hers, his head resting upon her shoulder.
“Caesarion!” Vorenus gasped. He fell down before the would-be pharaoh, to examine his wound.
The young man didn’t move. His eyes were open, but they focused on nothing. What they saw beyond this world, Vorenus did not know.
“He’s holding something.” Pullo’s voice was barely a whisper.
Vorenus looked down and saw that Caesarion had in his hand a bloody Nubian dagger. His fingers were loose upon the grip, and when Vorenus reached for it he was able to slip it out with ease.
“Oh, gods,” Pullo said.
Still holding the dagger, Vorenus turned toward his old friend, then followed his wide-eyed gaze back to Hannah, to her belly, to the movement beneath her bloodstained clothes. He swallowed hard. He took a deep breath, took one last look at their perfect faces, and then readied the blade in his hand.
* * *
When it was done, Vorenus staggered backward from the scene. His eyes welled with the tears he’d kept at bay; he looked up at the heavens, begging for forgiveness, praying he’d done the right thing.
The babe in his arms cried. And though his heart was breaking and his own agonized weeping would not cease, Vorenus thought that its cries of life were the most extraordinary sound he had ever heard. For a long time it seemed there was nothing else in the world but this precious, perfect thing.
Then dimly, like a whisper at the edge of his mind, he became aware of another sound. Steady, like waves on a far shore growing closer.
He cuddled the still-bloody infant girl against his chest. He blinked up.
The light of dawn had come upon Elephantine, dissipating shadows. The fog was lifting. No one still fought in the broken courtyard, which ended in a gash across the landscape. He could see that the entire upper tip of the island had dropped away into rubble and ruin, and in the distance he could see now the waters of the Nile, flowing steady and unconcerned for the lives and the deaths of man.
Some of the Nubians had survived, but they had dropped their weapons. They had fallen to their knees. Their voices were low, murmuring. Vorenus looked up in wonder. Though he did not know the language that they spoke, he knew their intent, clear enough.
They had fallen to their knees in reverence.
They were worshipping the bloodied Ark.
30
THE GATE CLOSED
CARTHAGE, 25 BCE
Isidora lurched into view. Selene had not seen her, but somehow she, too, had been crawling forward to her left. The young girl was close enough now that she scrambled forward, pulling her weak leg behind her, and dove into Juba.
For the space of heartbeats they wrestled, screaming. Energy erupted around them in flares of chaos. Then, with a final burst of light, Isidora was rolling past him, rolling away from him, and she had both the Lance and the Trident in her hands.
The traces of power that had been feeding the pit disappeared as quickly as a candle snuffed by a cup. The glowing red from its depths flashed hot once, and then went dark.
The three demons—Thrasyllus had shouted the word, and she was sure that’s what they were—who had come up from the pit began to scream in a pure fury that Selene knew she would never forget. Whatever they were, they struggled to reach down into the terrible void of the pit. A noise of horrific, unearthly agony welled up from below them. Selene looked over and saw that Thrasyllus had collapsed, fighting to cover his ears from the piercing wails.
But far, far worse was the too-human shrieking of Isidora, who writhed as storms of angry flames began to erupt from her body, breaking her apart as the uncontrolled power of the two Shards in her hands burned her alive.
Just as Thrasyllus had been, Selene was paralyzed at first. It was too much to comprehend, and in the vacuum of that understanding she simply froze up and stared at her dying friend. But when Isidora stopped screaming, when she ceased her torturous spasms, the wall of fear in Selene’s heart finally broke.